7 Ultimate Ways to Improve Your Writing in English

Writing is one of the most challenging skills but there are some ground rules that will help you to master it. In this article, I selected key tips and rules that will help you with any kind of writing from business correspondence and social media posts to essays and written assignments at school and university.

1. Use the right tone of voice

It’s important to choose the correct tone of voice for your English correspondence. If you are writing to Americans, be direct. American people are very relaxed and prefer to avoid unnecessary courtesy words and phrases in their emails. Instead, they are saving time for their readers and go straight to the point.

Furthermore, in the USA it is normal to use informal words and phrases from the spoken language in formal writing. For instance, an investor can start their email with “Hey, …”. They also like to use a lot of contractions and abbreviations, so it is normal to write “I’ll send these files over to you ASAP” in professional correspondence. While there may be situations when all formalities are followed, in 90% of cases written communication in the USA will be brief and simple.

If you are writing to British people, be very polite and formal. Often, they will send you an email of two or three passages, while its real content can be expressed in two to three sentences. Such introductory phrases as “Hope you are doing well”, “Hope you have had a nice weekend”, etc. and seasonal greetings are a mandatory part of any correspondence in the UK or Ireland. The same is true for closing lines. Instead of a brief “Best regards, …” they tend to use longer phrases, like “Look forward to hearing from you soon”.

2. Aim for clarity

Clarity is the key to writing any successful text, no matter whether it is an email, an essay, or a blog post. Any text always has a key idea, and it is important to formulate it clearly and precisely at some point.

In the case of correspondence (business or academic) or marketing copywriting, you should not forget to include in your texts a direct call to action. Whether you are pitching a new idea to investors, trying to find out more about the application process and selection criteria at the university, or inviting people to try your new product, state it clearly. After reading your message, people should understand what action is required from them and why.

Avoid ambiguity in your writing. This type of mistakes is especially common when you overuse pronouns and complex sentences in your writing. For instance, in the phrase “The dog of the neighbor that bothered him” does “that” refers to the dog or to the neighbour. We cannot know and the reader will have to look into the context to understand this simple phrase. It could be easily solved if the sentence were rephrased: “The dog of the neighbor who bothered him…”. Another example: “A car which stood behind the garage that was in need of paint”. It’s difficult to say whether the car or the garage was in need of paint. Look for similar cases in your writing and correct them by rephrasing the sentences.

3. Avoid over-explanation

To illustrate an idea or a point of view it is usually enough to provide one to three examples. If you go over this number, your writing is lacking clarity. If you need ten examples to illustrate the case you are building in an essay or to specify the term you are introducing, it means your case or your term is too vague. Try to formulate your point more precisely first. Then, the need for over-explaining will disappear.

The same is true for business correspondence. If you are writing an email or letter to ask a question, do not provide your own answers. Otherwise, you not only make the letter longer and more difficult to understand, but also limit the choices for your respondent. While they may provide you the answer you implied in the text, the other, more interesting opportunities or solutions may be left out because of that. Be as concise as you can.

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4. Avoid junk words and phrases

Make your writing sound more advanced by avoiding phrases and sentence structures straight from an English textbook.

When you are writing a formal email or an essay, please, refrain from using “There is” and “There are”. Usually, it works as a filler word in writing and increases the number of sentences you use. For instance, instead of writing “There are many students in San Francisco” you could simply say “Many students come to study in San Francisco”.

Another group of words to avoid are words-amplifiers, e.g. “too”, “very”, “so”, etc. “She is really beautiful” means “She is gorgeous” or “She is stunning”. By replacing the adverbs with words having stronger meaning, you demonstrate the knowledge of advanced vocabulary. It is highly appreciated in various language exams. Moreover, you sound like a native speaker, which helps with essays and written works at university.

The same rule applies to the usage of verbs. Instead of verbal phrases, like “to give a definition” or “to be better in something” use strong verbs “to define” and “to lead”. Your writing will be more precise and clear. If you want to figure out all the intricacies of using English words and boost your grammar and vocabulary, take some classes with a native speaker. At LinguaTrip.com we work with Joe, a professor of English from Boston, who helps our students with their speaking and writing, business English and exam preparation.

5. Avoid long and complex sentences

While in some languages, e.g. in Russian, it is typical to create long and complex sentences, the English language gives preference to simple structures. Keep your sentences as simple as they can be. The rule of thumb is: if you can put a full stop somewhere, use it there to finish your sentence. Do not try to connect a few simple sentences into one structure with commas and semicolons. Instead, play with some adjectives and adverbs to make your simple sentences more meaningful.

Often, using simple structures may seem repetitive and your texts become boring to read. To avoid that, you can introduce bullet points. This trick will work especially well for social media and blog posts, research papers at university, and business correspondence. It helps you to get rid of unimportant repetitive parts and focus readers’ attention on interesting and important facts.

Another important rule is to avoid the passive voice. Many languages prefer the active voice over the passive, and English is no exception. The active voice is shorter and simpler to understand which makes your writing easier to read. Also, it helps to avoid confusion and makes the structure of your sentences clearer.

6. Know the meaning of all words you are using

Often non-native speakers try to use synonyms to make their texts more interesting to read. However, often they do not check specific meanings of the words they find online and make logical mistakes because of that. Before using a word that the dictionary offers you as a synonym, check how it is used on its own and whether there are some specific connotations that word brings in.

For instance, the word “bold” has two quite different meanings. On the one hand, it can mean “confident and courageous.’’ In this case, you can use words “daring”, “brave” or “adventurous”. On the other hand, it can mean “impudent or presumptuous” and synonyms to “bold” in this case are the words “shameless”, “sassy” and “audacious”. When you choose the synonym without knowing these meanings, you risk using the wrong word. It will make your writing unclear in the best case and completely incorrect in the worst.

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7. Proofread your texts

This is the most obvious advice, yet it is often forgotten by non-native speakers. After some practice in writing, they feel so confident that they skip proofreading their texts. This can leave there small and obvious mistakes which they definitely would correct if only they had taken the time to check what they’d written.

The best way to catch all the mistakes in your text is to put it aside for a couple of hours or even days (if it is an essay or some big written assignment) and come back to it with fresh eyes. Re-reading your text straight after you’ve finished it may lead to your unintentionally skipping some parts and missing the mistakes or typos there. If you have no time for delaying the proofreading, try reading it from the end, line by line. It will help you to focus on what you have actually written and not on the meaning of words and phrases.

When proofreading the text, do at least two reads. One to check word by word that you have not made any grammatical mistakes or typos. The other to read full sentences and passages to ensure that there are no syntax or logical mistakes.

The ideal solution is to ask a native speaker to proofread the text for you. They can check not only grammar, but also style and vocabulary of your text, helping you to make it sound more natural. The service fluent.express helps you to achieve exactly that, with your texts being checked by American correctors live.

Summary

To create a good text in English, you should aim for clarity and precision. Avoid junk words and complex sentences, diversify your texts with synonyms and idioms, provide relevant and sufficient examples. Never skip proofreading of your texts and style them according to the audience. Then, you will be able to create strong pieces of writing even with an Intermediate English level.