10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills
Acquiring different writing skills may look like an arduous task. Mastering the art of writing requires practice every now and then. Even if one does not choose writing as a profession, one gets to engage in different writing activities — be it writing professional mails, devising LinkedIn posts, or other social media posts. Even possessing a Technical role, one may be required to submit reports, give presentations, prepare case studies and so on & so forth.
A number of people love to write and some love to share their day-to-day routines or experiences with the public. The content for public audiences varies — distinguished by video, audio or blog content. For some, engaging in research activities turn out to be rewarding and each style is distinguished by the referencing format.
Writing becomes quite intimidating for those who are unable to produce content on a daily basis. However, one may be required to produce content on a daily or weekly basis. Be it writing day-to-day memos or devising content for your blog, one has to put a considerable amount of effort into producing authentic, well-versed and easy-to-process content. Experimenting with different writing styles requires becoming apt in the generic flow of the words.
10 Simple Tips to Become a Professional Writer
Thereby, in order to improve your writing skills and be able to professional write-ups easily, these 10-steps have been compiled as follows:
1. Follow a Proper Structure Format
The first and foremost rule of thumb is to design a rough structure format, with proper start and end. Before beginning to write anything, make a mind map, revise the concept and make sure that it can be easily understood by the audience easily. Try to note down and include the questions in the rough notes that the readers must be curious to know about.
2. Keep the Write-up a Tidy One
In order to ensure that the reader is able to understand and comprehend the information presented in your write-up, try to avoid verbosity. Including too many complex words, repeating the words unnecessarily or making lengthier sentences won’t do any good. Try to break-down the technical jargon into easy-to-understand words. However, make sure, not over-explain anything or get into extra details. Keep the wordings simple and to the point!
3. Include Fewer Filler Words
Instead of including words that may rather portray a lack of vocabulary, try to include adjectives or adverbs that convey the meaning in a single word. For instance, use gorgeous instead of stating very beautiful or very elegant. This will allow you to avoid jumbled words. Furthermore, discard the words that unnecessarily take up space — try to avoid umm, okay, ugh, etc. To bring a sense of formalities into your writing, include contractions in your writing, such as can’t, won’t, don’t, etc.
4. Identify Various Writing Assistive Tools
With the passage of time, Engineers and Designers have developed tools for writers to lift a chunk of the burden off their shoulders. Writing may look like an arduous task but the actual time-consuming task is to edit your own write-up. To avoid leaving any unedited marks in your final drafts, invest in a few writing tools that will save quite a lot of time as well as embarrassment.
5. Use the Right Tense
The beauty of a write-up lies in the fact that it should be constructed in the right tense. The implication behind the right grammatical words is to present the idea in the simplest way. It is often advised to write the ideas in the Present tense, even if the focus is on the historical events as well. It simplifies the content and enables the reader to memorize the main points without many hurdles.
6. Be More Active than Passive
Though it may be easier to say, it’s true how hard it becomes to keep using Active sentences. People in general and search engines in particular discard the passive voice as it affects the readability score of the content. Furthermore, it represents a lack on behalf of the author or blogger that he/she is unable to explicitly put forth information in a simple way. Become apt in conveying information in an active manner.
7. Provide Authentic Non-Plagiarized Content
Stealing someone’s words is a serious ethical crime. You are good to go as long as you take an idea from the write-ups of other authors or bloggers. Copy-pasting the content can lead to serious fines against the violator, in accordance with the privacy laws. In order to avoid any unintended plagiarism and discard any traces of it, the best solution is to use a plagiarism checker. It will assist you in developing plagiarism free content. For scientific journals or any such reports, properly following a citation format and citing the findings in one’s own words help eliminate plagiarism.
8. Read and Read and Read
To become a Jack of one trade, maintain a healthy reading schedule. Google books, e-books or even podcasts relevant to your interests. Dig deep into your own niche and pen down how authors, marketers and bloggers use different approaches to convey a single topic. Further, discover the difference in choice of words, sentence structure and tone for the audience on different platforms.
9. Focus on Your Writing Tone
The tone in writing realms is often defined as the perception and feelings of the author. The tone of the author should adapt to the writing style. For expository or informative information, use a clear yet concise tone. Whereas, for creative write-ups, the tone needs to change with its respective sub-category. The tone is often exhibited through the usage of words, the syntax, symbolism, metaphorical representation as well as imagery. On a broader level, the tone should be decided on the basis of the audience and the storyline.
10. Just Keep on Writing
One of the simplest yet must-be-followed routines is to keep on writing, no matter what. Write prose, an article, a memo, to-do-list or anything to never get out of the practice. Just go with the flow and keep on writing — leave the editing to rest. It will allow you to explore the tones and combinations that would never have come to you. Keep on experimenting, write on whatever medium — online apps, pages, diaries and just make the process outcast your fears & worries.
In the end, keep following your favorite authors, experiment with different combinations of words and keep on writing!
