Three Tips To Improve Your Writing

Whether you’re a secretary at a small dental company or a CEO of an elite money-managing firm, it’s important to relay information clearly. Even small grammatical errors or misspellings can have big ramifications. Besides the fact that they make the author look careless, they can change meanings. Consider this:

A mother leaves a note for her son that says "Please eat Tom." Now, it so happens that 12-year-old Tom also has a fish named Tom. Not only that, he’s a grammar enthusiast. So, instead of eating the sandwich his mother had left for him, he pulls poor little Tom out of his tank and swallows the goldfish whole.

Now, if his mother had written "Please eat, Tom," then Tom would have known that she was just asking him to eat, not to eat his fish. The point is, writing matters. Here are three easy ways to improve.

Via Writing Forward

Don’t use the phrases “I think” or “Personally” or “In my opinion.”

These words immediately decrease the emphasis of your point. If you’re writing something then of course it’s your opinion. “I think the emotional cost of writing a book is…” comes across as weak. “The emotional cost of writing a book is…” is much stronger. You suddenly believe the author of this statement, whereas the first guy sounds like someone you wouldn’t want to follow onto the frozen pond—”I think it’s frozen…”

Remove excess words.

We have so many phrases that aren’t really correct, but we speak them and then put them in our writing. For example, we say “he slowed down for the light” when really we just need “he slowed for the light.” You might think it sounds weird, but it’s correct, and you’ll get used to it. Another example is: “With Larry leading the way, the three retreated down the hall…” Here, you don’t need “the way.” Just write, “With Larry leading, the three retreated down the hall…” These might seem like small, unimportant details, but if you look closely, you’ll realize our writing is full of these superfluous phrases. Cutting them out creates brevity.

Try to avoid the phrase “there was” or “there were.”

This pertains more to creative writers rather than technical writers, but the point is the same. “There was” removes action from a scene and is much less interesting. “There were hundreds of books on the shelves” is boring. “Hundreds of books spilled from the shelves” is better because it makes the scene come alive. You can picture all the books scattered across the shelves teetering precipitously. Find a verb to take the place of “there was” or “there were.”

Hope these helped, but if there’s one thing to learn from this, it’s to not eat a goldfish even if your mom told you to.