4. Style is Organic to the Person Doing the Writing

1. The writer should bring writing on the level of carpentry. Then, the issue of writer's identity comes.
2. The writer has to strip his/her writing down before he/she can build it back up.
3. One must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do.
4. Never forget that practicing a craft is based on certain principles.
5. Like weak nails make house weak, weak verbs make syntax rickety and sentences fall apart.
6. Nobody becomes a well-crafted writer overnight, not even the famous writer her/himself.
7. "There is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it."
8. "Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore, a fundamental rule is: be yourself."
9. To follow rule, writer must relax, and must have confidence.
10. A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
11. Writer feels he is in misery. But there is no cure to put him out of these miseries. "Some days will go better than others."
12. "Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person."
13. "Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. Therefore, I urge people to write in the first person: to use "I" and "me" and "we" and "us."
14. Writers argue that nobody cares about their opinions. But people or readers will care if the writer tells them something interesting.
15. Vast regions of writing (such as academic world, news stories in newspapers, articles in magazines, businesses and institutions reports, colleges, term papers or dissertations) do not allow any first-person pronoun. "Many of those prohibitions are valid."
16. "If you aren't allowed to use "I," at least think "I" while you write, or write the first draft in the first person and then take the "I"s out. It will warm up your impersonal style."
17. "Leaders who bob and weave like aging boxers don't inspire confidence—or deserve it. The same thing is true of writers. Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal."
18. "Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going."
19. These are my summary notes on 'Style' from a book "On Writing Well" written by William Zinsser.

These are my summary notes on 'Style' from a book "On Writing Well" written by William Zinsser.