Writing English as a Second Language

Hmm.

To me, the most interesting thing about English is that there is a lot of additional meaning invested in what seems to be a choice of synonymous words.

"I am not currently married" conveys to me "I am not married but I will/want to be".

"I am not married now" means "I am not married but I used to be".

No?

[Disclaimer: English is not my first language, though by now I have the greatest fluency in it]

I don't entirely disagree, but the examples he uses fail in their own terms. They don't do the job the writers want them to do.

It's technically true that the timeframes are missing from the club-owners letter, but 'in the past year' is irrelevant to the audience. Do you really think it's exactly twelve months since they started 'considering'? Why should any recipient care?

You're correct that the phrase is there because the writers want to persuade the reader that they've been hard at work on their behalf. It's just such a lazy cliche that it doesn't succeed! How about "Bob, Sue and Mike spent the last three days interviewing staff about how to improve the way we run things." It's far more concrete, and so much more convincing. It's also part of a story, which is a great way to keep people reading.

He has contempt for her writing because he has contempt for her job.

He never said such a thing. He does, rightfully, have contempt for her writing because it is bad. It is bad as writing and it is also bad as a 'sentimental, idealistic sales pitch'. Are you saying a sales pitch must be written badly?

Should we really declare one approach to a subject "better" because it results in punchier prose?

Not punchier, but better, more evocative, more accessible to a wide audience. The sort of prose a journalist should write and Zissner is, after all, speaking to future journalists. You insist on interpreting 'better' in a strangely literal, obtuse way - it's a fairly common little flourish (yes, English has them too) - and makes sense in the context. We say things like that -'the artist conveys the sense of grief/longing/joy/whatever better than any neurobiologist/psychologist/etc' all the time. It obviously doesn't mean poetry can replace the sciences.

Now he's just being lazy. He laments that people talk using "the working vocabulary of their field." Why shouldn't they? It's his job as a writer to produce the working vocabulary of his field

He's being lazy? How is he being lazy? He's telling his students that they will encounter this kind of speech and it is, indeed, their job to translate it to something better.

His whole talk is very much patterned after the stylistic advice given by Orwell in Politics and the English Language. Read it if you haven't. You might find Orwell a bit of a prick too. Or at least prickly. He's also right.

Neither Zinsser, nor Orwell (who wrote the famous essay with similar advice) say the use of such words is to be 'punchy'. I don't know where you and the angry commenter I replied to get that from. It's not advice meant to be make your prose 'punchy' but clearer and better. 'Punchy' is, frankly, dismissive.

Latin words are, of course, unavoidable and necessary in English. They're hardly all bad. Many often sound more 'formal' and important and are thus overused, though. The advice offered is really a call for vigilance and care - it's easy to slip into the overly-ornate style. It's particularly relevant to the foreign students Zinsser was addressing.

No style rules are immutable and absolute. But the guidelines offered by Orwell and echoed by Zinsser and many others form an important baseline. It's not supposed to be a narrow rail of a style you should never stray from. You're better off learning it well, though, before you do.