In his book On Writing Well, William Zinsser outlines a set of best practices and techniques for writers of all stripes and skills. Although the book is described as “The classic guide to writing nonfiction,” much of Zissner’s advice applies to fiction. After all, good writing is good writing. It’s the classic book to give to someone to subtly tell them they need to get better at writing. I read this book because my sister recommended it to me.

The book is organized into four sections: Principles, Methods, Forms, and Attitudes. Principles covers the basic principles of writing. Methods discusses the general structure of a piece of writing. In Forms, Zissner describes the best practices specific to certain types of writing, such as science reporting and memoirs, and provides notable examples. Finally, in Attitudes, Zissner talks about the relationship between an author and their writing.

First and foremost, Zissner advocates for a simple and clear voice in writing—“Simplify. Simplify,” he urges. The greatest enemy of writing is clutter. Born of passive voice and weird latinizations, clutter obfuscates the meaning of sentences. I tend towards the verbal clutter that Zissner so despises, though my writing never reaches the heights of corporate jargon.

Zissner delivers this advice in short, punchy sentences. These, too, have a purpose. The best sentences contain a single idea. If your sentences reach for more, then split them up into two, even three or four new sentences. I too am guilty of overloading sentences. Even as I write this article, superfluous adjectives and unneeded adverbs lurk around the corner.

The section about science is good. Zissner recommends reporting in an inverted pyramid: start with a single digestible fact, expand up, and gradually begin to cover the wider impact and finer details. Assume your audience is not familiar with the story, or even the field of science. I see these techniques across all forms of science communication, from the podcast Ologies (by Alie Ward) to the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist (by Katelyn Jetelina). This is the kind of writing that I want to do alongside research.

On Writing Well is a book for all writers and any point in their career or life, though I think it’s worth a read even for those of us who don’t see ourselves as writers. The chapters are self-contained and only as long as they need to be—and you don’t have to read every chapter like you might in a novel. Instead of describing the rest of the book here, I instead recommend you borrow out a copy and read it for yourself.