Four Ways to Improve Your Writing

Are you looking for ways to improve your writing? Ever wonder what makes some pieces more interesting to read than others? More than likely, those pieces are interesting because the writing is good. Writing that is good grammatically takes effort, but consistent practice makes it easier over time. If you try to consciously apply the following four suggestions to your articles, stories and emails on a daily basis for two weeks, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the improvements.

1. Avoid sentences starting with "There is/are" or "It is/was" - These are weak sentence openings. With a little bit of creativity, your sentence can become much stronger. Watch the following....
Example 1: There are three kinds of people in today's world - doers, procrastinators and slackers.
Example 2: Three kinds of people exist in today's world - doers, procrastinators and slackers.
Example 3: In today's world, people can be classified in three categories....
Example 4: Informal research shows that society is made up of three kinds of people....

Do you see the difference? Obviously, which variation you choose depends on the context of your sentence. The point is that a concrete subject and action verb are far stronger than a filler word (there) and a linking verb. Think details.

Are you thinking that you don't start sentences with "there" or "it"? A quick way to find these culprits is to use your word processing program's "find and change" feature. Give it a try on your current project. You might be surprised how much you use these little guys.

2. Avoid filler words. Adjectives and adverbs are okay to use. Sometimes they add a lot to the meaning of a sentence. However, constantly inserting adverbs or adjectives can make sentences tedious and unnecessarily long. Make sure that your words are essential to the meaning of the sentence. If they are not, they need to go.

Here's an example: I highly enjoyed learning about the consistently lively spirit of the bodacious outlaw leader in the historic town of Mud during the controversial 1880s.

Using big words or a lot of words doesn't make a person a great writer. Effectively using the words does. Consider this revision: I enjoyed learning about the lively spirit of Mud's bodacious outlaw leader during the controversial 1880s.

Why is the revision a better sentence? First, we eliminated the unnecessary "highly" - while different degrees of enjoyment may exist, allow your reader to infer your level of enjoyment from the tone and details of your writing. Second, "consistently" is a filler word, not really necessary for the overall sentence. Third, the word "historic" is repetitive of the "1880s" - if it happened in the 1880s, it is historic. We also revised the end of the sentence to eliminate the string of prepositional phrases.

3. Avoid using the same phrases over and over again. For instance, a recent project I worked on was filled with the phrase "in fact." The phrase itself is not bad, but when it appears in every paragraph, it becomes a nuisance. And sometimes, the information contained in the sentence really isn't a fact. Other filler phrases are "that is," "for example," "for instance" and the list goes on. If you find yourself using the same phrase over and over, ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary. Do you need to precede every illustration with "for example" or will your reader understand that you are giving an example?

4. Learn and practice consistent punctuation rules. Commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks. No exceptions. Question marks and colons are dependent on the context.