8 Tips to Improve Your Writing Style
Your writing style is your voice on the internet. Do you speak like James Earl Jones or Napoleon Dynamite? Remember that your words on the page are all that stand between you and your reader. They should catch the reader’s eye and draw them in. The following tips will help you improve your writing style.
Find your voice.
While styles grow and mature over time, there should always be some continuity in your writing. The way you set up your ideas and interact with them as well as the words you choose to use all make up your “voice.”
Write to your audience.
Not only does what you write matter but also how you write matters. You may a write a fabulous technical brief, but if it informal and uses too much slang it will not be given the attention it deserves. This applies to everything, if you write about informal things, be informal.
Bloggers by definition are writers. They may not write stories, but they write enough to fill many books. It doesn’t matter whether you blog about yourself or random and esoteric topics that only matter to you (cough: guilty). You are still a writer. If you write about yourself, you are writing an autobiography. If you write about current events, you are a journalist. If you write anything at all, you are a columnist, a historian, a science writer, or whatever title you want. You may not get paid a lot, but you are still a writer — most writers out there just gasped and said, “Yah right, like I do?” If you still don’t believe me, I am the self-appointed authority and I hereby declare you a writer, so don’t argue the point.
As a writer, the thoughts and ideas that flit around your head are the most important things you own. Random thoughts become great works of art …
8 Tips for Structuring Your Writing
The structure of writing matters as much as the content because an overly loose structure is just as difficult to read and enjoy as badly written content. The following eight tips will help you to find your own specific writing style while providing a few “best practice” tips. These tips will apply to anything you write be it a blog post or dissertation.
- The introduction should be helpful and interesting.
The first thing people will see in any type of writing is the introduction, and most people won’t read any further if the first couple sentences don’t interest them. Think about your first sentence this way: you just searched Google for something and this sentence is the first thing you read about a website. Would you click to read more?
- The main point, or thesis, should be stated in the introduction or at least clearly implied.
This hearkens back to what your teachers told you in school: have a thesis because it makes it easier for the reader to figure out what you are trying to say, and if you are writing anything even close to an essay, it is polite to let people know what your 1000 word post is going to be about.
8 Tips for Improving the Content of Your Writing
The content of writing is separate from style and structure because content is what you write not how you write. The following tips apply just as well to academic essays as to blog posts, so feel free to cherry pick the suggestions that apply best to your writing.
- Pick an an interesting, significant topic.
Too many times posts are done on something insignificant or unoriginal. It doesn’t really matter if you write a gorgeous tutorial or a powerful, inspiring and riveting essay if it just explains something most people already know about. Similarly, it doesn’t help to write about issues that very few people have an interest in unless you are writing it solely for your pleasure.
The biggest problem though is when people write about general topics that they have no real knowledge of and don’t say anything new about.
How to use the elusive comma
The comma has the most uses of any single punctuation mark making it one of the hardest for people to use properly.
The Basics:
- They join sentences and ideas.
- I am going on vacation for the summer, and I hope it doesn’t end up like last year.
- If you are happy person, life seems much better.
- However, it is best to just do it.
- They aid reading and offset less important information.
- Members, welcome! — If this does not have the comma then literally it is a command to the members to welcome.
- However, no matter what your excuse is, it doesn’t change the fact that you were late.
- They separate adjectives and list items.
- I was attacked by a big, angry dog.
- Tom, Fredrick, Negussie and Andy play football every day.
- I am going to the grocer, butcher and florist.
- They format numbers, dates, titles, and places.
- 39,552,923
- I was born on August, 22 1967 in Columbus, Ohio.
- James Pratt, M.D., won the Nobel prize in medicine.
Creating a World- An Introduction and The Goals
I have always wanted to write a book. Not just any book; a good one. One that creates an entire universe and populates it; maybe not even a single book, maybe a whole series. Anyway, that’s not why this whole section is here. Instead this section will create a universe. As a basic foundation it will be similar to any Fantasy book or movie you have read. There will be Elves, Dwarfs, Goblins and Dragons. Instead of creating a world defined by the genre and within a tired cliche, I will try to breath new life into the old themes; in such a way that the universe I create is unique while still be familiar and accessible.
