Improving Your Writing Skills

How many times have you heard that? Well, it's true, at least when it comes to the written word. Precision counts, especially in publishing. Creative and concise writing is essential, but careful proofreading is paramount.

Vocabulary is vital. Choosing and using the right words at the opportune time can spell the difference between a wordsmith and a hack. Spelling those terms correctly proves the distinction.

What steps can you take to beef up your vocabulary, sharpen your spelling and perfect your proofreading skills?

Read everything you can!

Reading expands your vocabulary and sharpens your spelling skills.

Our fast-paced culture slants towards immediate information. We want our news in quick sound-bites, rather than reading full-length features. Why not pick up some reading material, while your kids finish sports practice, or as you sit in the doctor's waiting room? If you ride the train or bus to work, how about scanning the newspaper or a magazine along the way?

The more you read, the more you will recognize correct words.

Do crossword puzzles.

Most daily newspapers offer super examples. The Sunday crosswords tend to be the most challenging (especially The New York Times puzzles, which are syndicated nationally). Basically, you cannot complete these criss-cross puzzles, unless you spell all of the words correctly. They simply won't match up.

Play word-related board games.

Gather your friends and family, and boost everyone's word power by playing Scrabble, Boggle, and other challenging word games. Pull out a dictionary to check unknown words. Watch everyone's spelling abilities grow, as you have fun together!

Practice word searches.

Word-find puzzles are tricky and fun to solve. These offer excellent practice in working with correctly spelled words. Books of puzzles are widely available, and you can even play with these online for free.

Play online word games.

Do a quick browser search for word puzzles, and see how many you find! Many puzzle sites offer word games. Popular ones include Bookworm, Cryptoquote, Flip-Words, Hangman, Pop-Word, Text Twist, Tumble Bees, Wheel of Fortune, Word Slinger, Word Whomp and more.

Buy a Word-a-Day Calendar.

Do you remember those popular page-a-day calendars? You can learn a new word (along with its proper spelling and definition) every day! Your whole family can benefit from this bonus. Place your calendar right on the kitchen counter, where everyone will see it throughout the day. In our home, we stage contests to determine who can use the daily word the most times.

Research Root Words.

Etymology is the study of the roots of words. A little research often reveals similarities, which can make you a better speller. Just consider the following words and how they may be logically linked.

Accommodations, commodities & commode
Analysis, analyze & anal
Because, causal & causative
Cessation, procession & recess
Confuse, defuse & refuse
Contest, pretest & testing
Creator, recreation & procreation
Deliberate, liberation & liberty
Digest, congest, ingest & indigestion
Frigid, refrigerate & refrigerator
Insist, persist & resist
Lax, laxative & relaxation

Get the point?

Read writings aloud.

By reading silently, we may zip quickly over entire printed lines, missing many errors. If we read the same items aloud, we are forced to slow down and pay much better attention. By doing so, we may catch grammatical errors, misspellings, misplaced words, run-on sentences, fragments, and other mistakes.

Enlarge each item.

When you write an article, press releasehomework assignment, newsletter, or book report on your computer, you can greatly increase your chances of locating any mistakes by increasing the size of what you have written. Using the "zoom in" feature (usually found under the "view" pull-down menu), you can change your entire editing perspective.

Proofread again on paper.

Most of us compose everything on our computers. Certainly, you can save a lot of time by editing right on the screen. However, printing items out affords you the opportunity to view a written piece in a different medium. You may look at each line a bit differently, and you often will spot typographical errors or other issues.

Be suspicious of spell-checkers.

Spell-checkers are not omniscient! Not only are they not infallible, but computer spell-checkers will not catch homonyms. Remember elementary school? Homonyms are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently. (Examples: "nun" and "none," "lone" and "loan," "yore" and "your" and "you're" and others)

Also, if you type the wrong word, but it is still a real word, your spell-checker will miss it.

Enlist another pair of eyes.

For decades, I have been an editor and proofreader. In fact, I've made my living at it. Still, I rely on others to proofread my writing. You see, the human brain naturally takes shortcuts. When we write, we tend to see what we intended to write, instead of what actually appears on the screen or page.

Not only that, but if we have worked with our material enough, we will soon subconsciously skim over entire sections. Thus, we may miss our misspellings and typos.

Simply put, every writer needs an editor, even if that writer actually is an editor himself.

What are the top 50 commonly misspelled words?

Accelerate
Accidentally
Accommodate
Accumulate
Acquaintance
Acquire
Anoint
Atheist
Cemetery
Commemorate
Congratulations
Consensus
Defendant
Definitely
Desperate
Development
Ecstasy
Embarrass
Exceed
Existence
Fiery
Fluoride
Genius
Grammar
Handkerchief
Harass
Insistent
Irresistible
Irritable
Judgment
Liaison
Lieutenant
Memento
Necessary
Occasion
Occurrence
Privilege
Proceed
Questionnaire
Receipt
Receive
Recommend
Repetition
Rhythm
Seize
Separate
Subpoena
Tyranny
Weird
Yield