But narrative is the oldest and most compelling method of holding someone’s attention; everybody wants to be told a story. - William Zinsser

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Probably no subject is too hard if people take the trouble to think and write and read clearly.

Writing, I reminded them, can’t be taught or learned in a vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: “This is how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You can do it too.” In many subjects, students don’t even know that a literature exists — that mathematics, for instance, consists of more than right and wrong answers, that physics consists of more than right or wrong lab reports.