William Zinsser Simplicity Analysis

William Zinsser is an American writer who wrote an informational guide to writing. He decided to revise a specific chapter called Simplicity. In the year 1980, he created the first version of Simplicity, then came 1998 followed up by 2006. In the first version, 1980, Zinsser created a long and wordy paper. He used specific examples also including details that were unnecessary. This is ironic because the paper is about how writers can write unnecessary words and phrases creating complicated sentences. He was not inclusive of gender, naming men as writers and only using wives as examples of distraction. This draft had a complete count of 20 paragraphs. The 1998 version had few changes when compared to the 1980’s version. There were …show more content…
(Paragraph 2-2006) He changed viscous language to clotted language. This makes sense, he used a more commonly used word for this time period, making it readable to a younger generation of readers and writers. (Paragraph 2-2006) He took out "-on Christmas Eve or any other eve-," this made sense because it was an extra unneeded detail. The sentence made complete sense just as “what father or mother can put together a child's toy from the instructions on the box?”. In paragraph 4 he changed what was originally “the president of a major university” in versions from 1980 and 98 to "the president of my university” in the 2006 version, making a personal connection with the reader. (Paragraph 8- 2006) He completely redid the paragraph. In the 1980 and 1994 version, the 8th paragraph was completely unneeded and included a story that seemed unrelated to the topic of writing. It started as “I love to be alone”. The 2006 version of this paragraph wasn’t completely off topic from the original. I still believe this paragraph isn’t needed, even with the shortening. With the 2006 version, he has taken out the “he’s” and switched to “they”. This allows women to feel included, making it more likely for a female to enjoy the writing. It felt exclusive in the first two versions. In the newest version (paragraph 10) he included devices relevant to that time period. Instead of saying “he,” he said a man or woman could be distracted by many forces competing for attention. Also leaving out being distracted by the wife and changing it to "spouse". On this version, he combined paragraphs 11 and 12 from the 1998 version. Making more room for another paragraph to include more information. He shortened down a sentence in paragraph 12 that was originally paragraph 13 in the 1998 version. The original sentence stated, “the reader is at first a remarkably tenacious bird”. In the 2006 version, he revised it to “readers are at first tenacious.” making it