Zinsser would be insulted

William Zinsser wrote 'On Writing Well,' a little used book from my undergrad days. It's often been helpful for answering hard grammar and stylistic questions, but for the most part, it lives on my bookshelf collecting dust. Zinsser preaches word economy. Don't sugar coat it. Get it out. Be direct. Less is more.

This weekend I pulled it out again to use on a team paper. The paper was a cluster, as all team projects are, because the person who needed to get his part to me to edit waiting until Friday at 6 pm to send it. I offered to edit the entire paper, give it one voice and to correct any imperfections that needed correcting. Everyone else got me their sections on Tuesday. I had their parts mostly finished and was waiting on this past piece. What I got was, well, unexpected.

Let me first say that I know that I'm not the best writer in the world. I spell words wrong, I miss typos, I have dangling participles. But for the love of all that is holy, I am a great writer compared to some. This weekend I met that someone and his style of writing was crap.

Direct quote: "Some of the homes within a mile or two of Coors Field, a for profit business investment that has brought may benefits, working parents but no lock on the front door."

What. Is. That? It's not a sentence. It's not even a complete thought. Coors Field is a building. The Colorado Rockies are a business. (Not to mention, Coors Field was paid for by tax dollars.)

But this is just the beginning. After spending - not kidding - seven hours editing the five pages of poorly written, run on sentences, non-sequiturs and incomplete thoughts, with 10, count 'em, 10 different references to authors, I finally had something that I wasn't embarrassed to show in public. I cut the authors down to six. I deleted 90 percent of his writing and rewrote the lead and the end paragraph. I kept some random things that I thought he would want in there just to let him have some dignity.

His response? There are too many references to authors. It seemed like a name dropping competition. Mmkay? And I took out his "baby" of a topic, Coors Field, which he still referred to as a for profit business. And shouldn't we talk more about Denver in the readings instead of just showing we did the readings? I'm sorry, what was the name of the section again? Oh yes, "Impact of the Readings."

Oh, and don't forget that he is the only one who knows what the professor wants and clearly I just don't understand. This is the part where I bite my lip. I must refrain from telling him that I do understand what the professor wants or I wouldn't have received 100% on my papers when he only got 85%. I found out later that another team member had already told him what I got on my papers. Yet still he thinks he knows better.

It's no wonder that I dropped the gloves when he wrote the conclusion. These are not sentences, I said. You can't introduce new facts in a conclusion. You can't ask a question in a conclusion. You are concluding the paper, not starting a new section. No, you don't need a whole page for a conclusion. A paragraph will wrap it up. Conclude it. Or as Zinsser would say: Less is more. Cut out half and you're on the right track.