On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

What if the virtue, the value, of the sentence is the sentence itself and not its extractable meaning? What if you wrote as though sentences can’t be summarized? What if you value every one of a sentence’s attributes and not merely its meaning?

Good writing consists of the simplest, clearest, fewest words that make the point.

The second suggestion Vonnegut makes in “How to Write with Style” is “Do not ramble.” I won’t, as he said he wouldn’t, “ramble on about that.” The third is “Keep it simple.”