Ways to Improve Your Writing

Author: Samantha G. Robins, writer at www.essayshop.org

Improving your writing skills is important for many things in life. It helps you a great deal during school, though it is during college and in your professional life when your writing skills become extremely important, and this makes the improvement of your writing crucial. The significance of good writing jumps from school to college, when you begin writing your essays and term papers, and later on an academic research paper during a research project or academic placement or internship. It is here that the difference between good writing skills and bad writing skills amounts to the difference between success and failure, and so you should make every effort to improve your skills all the time.

There are many key aspects of writing that you need to pay attention to and try to develop as you progress, and the following points outline the most important considerations.

Grammar, punctuation and spelling

You are taught the literary skills of grammar, punctuation and spelling before any other writing skills, and as such you should already have skill with using the correct grammar depending on what you are writing about, the correct punctuation so that certain words make sense and the writing flows properly, and of course good spelling. The best way to improve these is by reading and writing, and over time you will naturally improve. However, for an academic essay or research paper, a word processor will automatically highlight incorrect spelling, and improper grammar and punctuation. This does not mean you should forget about the skills yourself, because word processors don’t always get things right.

Style, form and technique

You can always tell the difference between a good writer and a bad writer, since a bad writer will not be appropriate with literary style, or be boring with their words. A good writer makes things engaging and exciting, which is not only good by itself, but helps the writer to get the reader interested in what they have to say. A good writer will use figures of speech - such as similes or personification �" effectively, and to place emphasis on a point, not just for the sake of it. For formal and less creative work like a research paper, the most important thing is clarity and effectiveness, and these skills develop from the constant practice of style and technique, and gaining new vocabulary to help explain things more concisely.

Writing styles

Students and professionals who get ahead and succeed greatly know how to communicate effectively. This is a natural and important part of success within academia, for writing essays, term papers and research papers and developing writing skills and an effective writing style is something which takes years to develop and hone. There are many ways in which to improve upon your writing. Improvements in spelling, grammar and punctuation are simply about practice, so that the right words are used for the right situations, and the words are relevant and spelt correctly. Modern technology makes this a much easier process than it used to be, and now there is little reason left at all for us to remember how to spell tricky words or remember the right punctuation, thanks to word processing software. However, a good and effective writing style, and using an appropriate writing style for the situation in hand, is much harder to teach, and there is no software available to help improve the style of writing.

The concept of writing style

While we all know what the term “writing style” means, there is no definitive set of rules or definitions which defines what a good writing style is, as opposed to the rules of grammar and punctuation. The case is that we simply know good writing when we see it, just as we know bad writing when we see it, but being in the former camp is much easier said than done. There are still things that can be learnt however to help improve writing style, and there are also many examples to be avoided, so that the writer does not fall into the trap of bad writing.

Tips on writing style

Firstly, the style of your writing needs to be relevant and appropriate to the subject you are writing about. What is the same for everything however, is that clear and concise writing is always better than convoluted writing, which simply meanders and does not stick to the point. This point is especially true for scientific and technical writing. Be as simple and direct as possible, and avoid adverbs and adjectives which offer little to the writing. Avoid contradicting yourself, and try to find the middle ground between completely formal and informal writing. Narration and tense for academic writing and research papers should be presented in the third person and in present tense for clarity.