Do you want to know how to improve your writing?
If you do, then come along with us.
Writing is something you cannot avoid even as a businessperson.
This is because in business you will write letters, press releases, emails, reports, handbooks, newsletters, meeting agendas, memos, and so on.
So, do not think that you will not have to write as a businessperson.
Since you have to write, you need to ensure that you do it well because your credibility, knowledge, and expertise can be judged based on your writing.
Therefore, if your writing is poor, you need to work to improve it.
We want you to be the best at what you do.
Hence, we have prepared great tips that you can make use of to improve your writing.
However, before we share those tips, we will be looking at some basics of writing.
This will give you a better idea of how to improve your writing skills.
So, we advise that you carefully follow us.
Basics of Writing – How to Improve Your Writing
When we talk about the basics of writing we are talking about those set of skills that enables one to write well.
To improve your writing, you need to know these skills, develop or improve them, and make good use of them.
These skills are grouped into three:
- Basics writing skills
- Writing processes
- Writing knowledge
We will be looking at these categories one at a time.
Basics Writing Skills
This set of skills is called basic writing skills because they require a basic understanding of writing.
Writing is defined to be the process of making use of symbols such as letters, spaces, and punctuation to communicate ideas and thoughts in a coherent and readable form.
Basic writing skills are concerned with getting those symbols right and putting them properly to form coherent ideas.
This is why we say that they require a basic understanding of writing.
Some of these skills include:
- Proper punctuation and spelling
- Capitalization
- Sentence structure
- Paragraph construction
Text Generation – How to Improve Your Writing
This set of skills is focused on translating your ideas or thoughts into language.
They are what help you to create your writing content.
These skills include:
- Vocabulary (word choice)
- Proper Tense
They make use of basic writing skills to write out thoughts and ideas.
For example, if your idea is to talk about business as a good venture for making money, you can make use of different word choices.
You can either say “Business is a lucrative venture” or “Business is good for money-making”.
The words you choose to use in the different sentences are different.
Hence, you will make use of different spelling and sentence structures.
Writing Process
When you possess good basic writing skills and text generation skills, you then need to be concerned about writing process skills.
This is because these skills are what differentiates a professionally written work from other written work.
They involve planning, revising, and editing skills.
These skills are what ensure the success of a written work.
Writing Knowledge – How to Improve Your Writing
Finally, writing knowledge is all about knowing and understanding the different types of writing.
You need to know them to ensure you write according to your message and your targeted audience.
For example, if you want to write about why your business will be profitable for investment, then you have to make it both informative and percussive.
If you do not understand the different writing styles, you might end up writing with the wrong style.
This will not help you to get your desired result.
Types of Writing Style – How to Improve Your Writing
Your writing style holds a significant percentage of the success of any of your written work.
Hence, it is something that should not be taken lightly.
To improve your writing, you need to know and understand the different writing styles.
Therefore, we will discuss them with you.
Narrative Writing – How to Improve Your Writing
The narrative writing style is one that storytellers use more.
It is because it is all about recounting or sharing details about what happens to characters.
This narrative can give an account of a character’s tales through years, months, or even minutes.
It can either be fiction or fact.
Narrative writing style has features such as character, plots, setting, emotion, core message, and conflict.
When it is fictional, narrative style can take on different forms because it can be formed based on a writer’s imagination.
Regardless, whether factual or not, all narrative writing style takes readers on journeys through a start, middle, and end.
Narrative writing style is mostly used for creative writing and fiction.
However, you can make use of narrative writing in a nonfiction work to make your readers find the work more compelling.
You can make use of narrative writing style in the following:
- Short stories
- Novels
- Memoirs
- Feature stories
- Creative essays
- Speeches
- Presentations
Descriptive Writing
As the term implies descriptive writing is all about capturing and describing the details of places, scenes, or people you are writing about.
Descriptive writing aims to immerse readers in an experience.
It makes readers feel and think they are where is being described or seeing what is being described or the people being described.
To effectively achieve descriptive writing, you need to be able to paint pictures with your written words.
When you write a certain thing, what is your reader envisioning in their mind?
Description writing is not limited to the sense of sight but also smell, touch, hearing, and touch.
It also involves capturing feelings or moods with metaphor and simile.
You can make use of descriptive writing style for:
- Song lyrics or poems
- Fiction
- Narrative nonfiction (memoirs)
- Copy-writing (travel destination or product description)
Persuasive Writing – How to Improve Your Writing
This style of writing involves sharing your opinion or point in a way that will convince or influence the readers’ idea or viewpoint.
Persuasive writing is the best way to get your idea to others and inspire others to take steps and actions towards an issue or cause.
When you write persuasively, you do not just state your point and get people convinced.
Rather, you effectively back up your idea or opinion with evidence such as:
- Statistical evidence (studies or facts)
- Testimonial evidence (experts quotes)
- Anecdotal evidence (interviews or personal experience)
- Textual evidence (primary sources or book passages)
Even with evidence, your writing might lose its persuasive power if you do not keep emotions in check.
For example, if you give excessive emotion while sharing personal stories to build your argument, you can cloud your core points and discourage your readers.
Instead of doing this, think of those important things you could talk or write about to convince your readers.
Persuasive writing style can be used in:
- Speeches
- Presentations
- Op-eds
- Essays
- Cover letters
- Recommendation letters
- Sales Writing
- Copy-writing (conversion)
- Editorial piece
- Reviews
- Job applications
Expository Writing
This writing style is all about informing and explaining subjects or topics.
Its main aim is to teach readers about something.
The classic why, who, what, how, and when are questions that readers can have concerning a subject.
Expository writing aims at answering them.
For this to be effectively done, you are to explain things clearly and avoid jargon, technical language, or words that can confuse people.
Expository writing has to be approached from the mindset of a beginner to ensure it is helpful.
Also, it should only be focused on facts and not agenda or angles.
Expository writing is used for:
- How-to articles (such as this article you are reading)
- Textbooks
- Training material
- Business or technical writing
- FAQ pages
Creative Writing – How to Improve Your Writing
Creative writing style breaks the norms and rules of the other writing styles.
This is because it exists outside the rules of the previously mentioned styles.
It sometimes combines the different styles in amazing and fresh new ways.
This writing style’s main aim is to discover new ways or approaches to storytelling that can delight and surprise readers.
With creative writing, the only thing limiting you is your imagination and not the rules.
In other words, you can write freely without considering the rules that make up a great written work.
Some written works where you can come across creative writing include:
- Satire or humor writing
- Flash fiction
- Poetry
- Data journalism
- Creative nonfiction
Importance of Good Writing – How to Improve Your Writing
Before we share the tips on how to improve your writing, we want to look at the importance of good writing.
We earlier hinted at some reasons why you need to know how to write well.
Now, we will look more closely at it.
This should boost your interest in improving your writing.
It is Needed For Effective Communication – How to Improve Your Writing
Communication is important for everyday living and working.
It does not only involve speaking but also writing.
In the workplace, written communication holds a fair percentage.
Hence, if you cannot effectively write, you will have issues with people understanding you.
This in turn can cause misinterpretation and unnecessary conflicts.
Good writing helps to ensure that you practice effective communication wherever you find yourself.
Check here to discover 20 easy ways to improve communication in the workplace.
It Ensures That Your Credibility Is Not Questioned
People judge others based on their writing.
If you have not met someone one-on-one but have read their written work, you can get a sense of that person’s knowledge, personality, or expertise.
The impression you get from their writing is what you would use to judge them.
So, if your writing is poor, your credibility and expertise can be questioned by people who have not met you in person.
Good writing helps you to avoid this.
It Increases Your Chances of Getting Your Desired Result
As we earlier said, writing is also a way of communicating, and we oftentimes communicate to persuade or make requests from people.
If you write to persuade or make a request with poor writing you can confuse or annoy people.
As a result, your chances of getting your desired result will be less likely.
However, when you can effectively and properly write, people will understand you, and even buy into your ideas.
They will be more likely to provide you with what you desire.
In other words, good writing increases your chances of getting your desired result.
It Improves Your Reasoning Skills – How to Improve Your Writing
When you can write well, it helps to improve your reasoning skills.
This is because good writing takes organized and fully-developed thoughts.
You need to be capable of structuring your ideas and sharing them in your writing in a way that others will understand.
So, when you can do this, you develop and improve your mind to reason better.
Tips on How to Improve Your Writing
We have discussed the different writing skills and writing styles, and also seen the importance of good writing.
Now, we will share the earlier promised tips on how to improve your writing.
These tips are effective but will lose their efficiency if they are not practiced and used.
Hence, we advise you to practice the following tips:
1. Understand What You are Writing About
If you do not fully understand the topic or concept you are writing about, you will have a difficult time writing about it.
So, the first thing to do before writing is to understand your topic, concept, or subject.
Explain that topic or concept to yourself.
For example, if you want to write about pursuing business goals, then you should know what business goals are.
Ensure that you have a better understanding of what you want to write about, and stick to that understanding as you start writing.
2. Outline Complex Message – How to Improve Your Writing
Yes, we do understand that some messages can be complex and a lot more difficult to put into writing.
However, there is a way you can write complex messages and do a great job at it.
All you need to do is to outline the topic and the points you intend to cover.
Outlining is all about writing out quick notes after something.
Once you outline your topics, you can make use of them to organize and compose your message.
When you do this, it will save you from a headache or writer’s block and also your time.
3. Do Not Give Too Much Detail For Everything
The same way you can get overwhelmed with points and ideas you want to share is the same way your readers can get overwhelmed with too much detail.
So, before you write down your ideas and thoughts ensure that you have them organized and kept simple.
Do not be consumed with the need to give your readers too much detail.
They do not need to know some trivial details before they can understand what you are trying to communicate with them.
Instead of bombarding them with excessive information, figure out the information that your readers will need to understand your point or message.
When you do, discard the excessive or irrelevant information.
4. Anticipate The Reader’s Questions – How to Improve Your Writing
To improve your writing, you need to think about the readers.
Do not just think about them, put yourself in their position.
When you do this, you will find it easier to write to the understanding of your readers.
5. Eliminate Fillers
Filler words or phrase tends to pop up when we write.
These words oftentimes do not contribute much to our writing.
Although, they sometimes add flare, color, and sometimes meaning to our work, most times all they do is clutter our work.
So, instead of allowing them to compromise the effectiveness of your work, ensure that you eliminate them.
6. Use Fewer Adverbs – How to Improve Your Writing
Adverbs modify or qualify verbs and also adjectives.
They often with “- ly”.
These words are good for writing.
However, when you used them excessively, you are making your word choice weak.
This can make your work less effective and engaging.
So, learn to use fewer adverbs.
For example, instead of writing “very beautiful”, write “gorgeous”.
When you do this, your writing will shine better.
7. Keep Your Word Choice Simple
We are oftentimes tempted to use those “big words” to prove that we know what we are talking about.
However, this does make our work richer.
Rather, it makes it confusing and less coherent.
Instead of using these “big words” keep your words simple and flow freely.
You can sometimes insert some of these words, but ensure that you use them with restraint.
8. Read Your Work Out Loud – How to Improve Your Writing
This aspect of creating a written work is often overlooked by several people.
However, it happened to be a crucial part of ensuring your work is good.
So, before you submit, send, or print your work, ensure that you read it aloud.
When you do this, it can enable you to discover errors and see whether your writing flows smoothly or freely.
If you discover that it is lacking in any way, then you can work to correct it.
9. Let Your Personality Show
As a writer, your personality matters too.
Your personality makes your work more unique.
So, ensure that you let your personality show in your work.
However, while you do this, ensure that you do so with restrictions within the limit of the type of piece you are writing.
10. Practice – How to Improve Your Writing
The best way to improve your writing is by finding where you are lacking and then working to fix it by practicing.
Understand that as you keep writing, proofreading, and editing, you will keep becoming better at them.
Conclusion on How to Improve Your Writing
Written work can be poor or good.
It all depends on how good your writing is.
If your writing is poor, then you will be depriving yourself of some good advantage in your business and personal life.
Hence, if you do not want this, you should work to improve your writing.
In this article, we have shared great tips on how to do this.
So, we encourage you to take advantage of them.
