Improving Your Writing Skills
Writing is communication. The following tips are designed to give your writing the best results possible.
Write to your audience.
Your effort is meaningless if you don’t consider your intended audience. Gear your communication specifically toward those most likely to read it.
Explain the Who, What, Where, When, How and Why.
Outline your communication. If you communicate the who, what, where, when, how and why, you ensure that you’ve included all the information you need to give your intended audience. The outline could be as simple as:
- Introduction
- Main point(s)
- Summary.
Use an active voice and tense.
Use the active voice in your communication to keep the reader’s interest. You don’t have to use it all of the time, but use it frequently to keep your writing fresh.
Get to the point.
We tend to be too wordy when we write. Communicate the best and quickest way. One way to do this is by eliminating unnecessary wording, or deadwood.
Here are a few examples of deadwood:
- “doing the ...”
- Original sentence: “We are doing the printing of the yearbooks.”
- Delete “doing the” and “of.”
- The new sentence, “We are printing the yearbooks,” is more concise and has a more active voice.
- “in order ...”
- Original sentence: “In order to pay his bills, John had to work two jobs.”
- Rewrite as “To pay his bills, John had to work two jobs,” or better yet, as “John had to work two jobs to pay his bills,” eliminating the need for a comma, and therefore a pause in reading.
- “help ...”
- Original sentence: “Our experts can help generate ideas for you,” can be written as “Our experts can generate ideas for you.”
Avoiding deadwood by using their shorter counterparts makes for faster and easier reading.
Avoid cliches and industry jargon.
Many times we try to use words and phrases to dazzle and amaze, and they end up being used so often they become tired or irrelevant. Using items from the list of words and phrases to avoid is an easy trap to fall into, especially if you are writing for a technically oriented audience. If you do use them, make sure they actually describe and apply to what you are writing about.
Quality and accuracy count.
You want your audience to understand what you are saying; you want to be clear on what you are saying; you want your information to be interesting and pleasing to read—in short, you want to sound professional. The last thing you want is for your readers to think you are an amateur, and nothing screams amateur like a misspelled word. Therefore, it is most important that your spelling is flawless and your facts are accurate. The same goes for punctuation.
Have someone check your work.
This tip is arguably the most important. You’re done with your writing, and think you’re finished. Think again. You need someone to look over your work for a variety of potential problems—typos, bad word usage, spelling, content meaning and readability, content structure, and others.