Last Updated on 28-Mar-2023 by Charles Maxwell
Do you sometimes think you need to improve your writing? But you just don’t have time to buy and read a writing book or look for something good from the hundreds of videos and thousands of articles on the internet?
James Manktelow and Amy Carlson (in a video no longer on YouTube ) offered the following tips to improving your writing:
- Know your audience. Adjust your content and the tone of your writing to match their needs.
- Determine where to start by asking what your readers need to know first.
- Identify your theme, your central point.
- Create an outline for longer documents.
- Use simple words and short sentences.
- Structure your message by using headings and bullet points.
- Check for errors. Edit to ensure proper word use, grammar, and punctuation.
- Proof effectively by reading out loud to check for flow.
- When proofing, make multiple passes through your document.
In the following 10‑minute video, Steven Van Hook supplies 6 more tips, which he gleamed from the University of Chicago Writing Program.
He says:
- Use resonant characters. In your writing, resonant characters will be persons (real or imagined) with whom your readers readily relate. In business writing, resonant characters generally will be business owners, business executives, managers, workers, or clients.
- Use action verbs, which are verbs that describe real activity.
- Keep nouns and verbs close together.
- Link phrases and sentences with connecting words and phrases. Use words such as because, therefore, before, after, consequently, correspondingly, etc.
- Progress from what is known to what is to be learned.
- Structure documents using the problem-solution-action framework. First, discuss the problem. Next, discuss possible solutions. Last, lay out an action plan.
Conclusion
From my experience, these techniques solve most writing problems.
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Photo Credits
Typewriter, photographer Suzy Hazelwood, Pexel, 1995842, altered by adding text.