Develop Your Writing Skills: A Step-By-Step Guide

The desire to improve writing skills is worth realization. Having once made efforts to get the needed knowledge to acquire them you will be pleased with the endless quantity of occasions. This is not only about studying. Poor writing skills may be hampering your career as an ability to express your idea clearly is well appreciated any field.

What to start with?

Of course, first steps have a high value when you are just starting to connect effective behavior in a new realm. Varied resources can entrust you hundreds of tips on the topic. Some dwell on the topic choice, others – about the effective presentation of the evidence chapter. You will also find pieces of advice about searching for sources for research, introduction, conclusion, thesis, voice, and the proper procedure of proofreading. Such providers are numerous. All of them can help you to create a worthy work but the question is whether you can afford to spend a day reading them, thinking of stages to implement, and trying to assess their effectiveness.

Mind your audience

Before you have written a passage or two on the determined topic think of the reader for this is one of the main factor influencing the tone and the voice of message. Without such consideration, the text will be worthless. Even if the subject of the discussion represents value the form of presentation can devaluate the whole assignment. Your reader is your king and your folk in one. Your presentation is a bright demonstration of your understanding of the needs of your audience which may differ from your own. Do you want to bring your reader to your side?

• Show your awareness of the peculiarities of “their world” and the author’s respect offering a clear presentation.
• Simplify the perception of the text as much as possible avoiding a surplus of long and short sentences. Stay away from the five-lines-long sentences. The same can be told about the choice of words. Never use long and complicated lexical units where you can insert a simple and short for brevity is indeed valued.
• Proper punctuation is one more means helping the reader find his way in the unknown surrounding of the author’s thoughts. Combine the sentences into passages united by the same idea. Never forget about linking lexical units which help to find a proper cause-and-effect relationship. In this concern, the proper presentation should also contain pointers to make the core ideas proving your thesis more obvious. This is a must when the paper itself is a volume work.
• Then it should include well-organized titles and subtitles, introduction for thesis, introduction for the chapters.
• Trying to find the best way to your reader don’t omit the section where you should note the sources you used when preparing the paper. If the guidance offered for this task does not include any data about the references and bibliographies presentation consult your teacher. Pretending you have not heard about this peculiarity of paper writing will not help.

Mind your language

Apart from respecting your reader as to a person you should illustrate the same proper respect to them as a well-educated specialist. This assumes you should represent a sample of proper language. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation correctness compose the obligatory minimum for the work which is worthy of high evaluation. Spelling mistakes can be eliminated in the process of proofreading. This assumes three (or four) stages: computer spelling check, own verification, a fellow student, a parent, or your instructor’s verification. Don’t neglect any of them to make certain your paper will get the desired mark. This demands time but is the most effective method to get rid of serious errors and misprints.

The sequence should be represented as mentioned above:

• start with checking program for it will detect the most simple mistakes for you not to pay attention to them in future and will offer their own wrong vision of spelling for some words which you will have to correct yourself.
• That is why the second stage of verification is yours. Do your best but remember you can hardly detect all the misprints.
• A third party will be the best solution for this problem as your helpers have not yet seen your assignment which will allow them to notice all the drawbacks of the work. This concerns more than spelling. It can be useful to structure the ideas, to make improvements in tone, voice, correspondence to the academic requirements, etc.
• Taking your courage in both hands when representing your half-done assignment to your instructor you can get valuable pieces of advice to make your paper a balanced one. Just dare! Grammar check is a little more complicated thing as dictionaries do not offer correct forms for the sentences. This will make you refresh your knowledge of grammar rules.

Such are several main directions to work in:

• mind your sentence structure;
• remember the importance of paragraph usage;
• make certain your colons and semi-colons are in their places;
• check the commas.

Accept your first draft

Be ready to accept your first draft which will hardly impress you. Take a brave decision to continue. Having started writing you make your important impact to the ready worthy essay in future but don’t expect too much. You will have to continue writing even if your first part is a true lame duck as to allow its transformation into the beautiful swan several stages of proofreading are needed. Checking the draft while writing it is not effective. Thus, you will spend more time and have chances to forget what was your next idea you were about to put down. The process can become more productive if you will devote the number of proofreading stages to the certain aspects of verification:

• academic directives,
• superfluity,
• consequentiality,
• linking,
• editing.

Abate your expectations

A beginner can hardly represent a perfect piece of work. Your instructor does not expect that, so stop reading your essay for the third thousand time. Your awards for the perfect writing style and catching topics are waiting for you but for now you are to acquire knowledge and skills to become a worthy writer with our writing tips for beginners. The feedback of your friends, parents, and the instructor can help determine whether the paper corresponds to the indicated academic standards. Just don’t make it your obsession.

Practice regularly

Unlike nervousness during writing and checking the work which cannot help to become a decent author regular writing is the solution. Practice develops your own writing technique. So, don’t give up!