Monday, January 23, 2017

Three Important Tips to Write Better: Concision, Diction, and Proofreading.

Writing is a hard task even for professional writers. Simply grouping a few words together, connecting those sentences, and creating a paragraph is a piece of cake. However, writing a well organized piece that clearly conveys your idea is difficult. Improving one’s writing skills is a long-term process, but these tips will help you to quickly enhance your writing.

  1. Be Concise!
Writing concisely can be challenging because you want to be as specific as possible so that you won’t confuse your readers. Yes! You do have to provide enough information for them to follow your idea. However, too much detail in a sentence that is redundant or repetitive can make it worse. Too much detail will not only confuse your readers even further but will also bore them. So try to find phrases that can capture your points most briefly, eliminating any unnecessary additional information.


     2. Diction!
In order to write concisely, you have to pay close attention to your diction as well. Diction is word choice. It is crucial because it helps determine your tone and writing style. Three elements that you have to keep in mind when choosing a word is its purpose, accuracy, and precision.
Before you start choosing the word, ask yourself a question: What are you trying to say? Then choose a word that best suits the purpose of your writing. Try to select an accurate word with the fewest syllables. Using unnecessarily long word another way to easily confuse and bore your readers.
Once you’ve chosen a word, think about its precision. One way to check its precision is to consider the connotation of the word. Connotation is the nuance or a feeling that a particular word has in addition to its original meaning. The connotation of a word should suit the tone of your writing.

    

3. Proofread.
You can never produce a high quality piece of writing unless you proofread what you’ve written. Check if the writing is consistent with your point. See if the flow of the writing smoothly leads to your strong and convincing argument without causing any confusion. This is another part where you should check your repetitiveness because, again, too much detail can make the writing digress digress the writing from your point. Trivial mistakes like grammatical errors can also distract the readers. If possible, proofread your writing more than once to avoid any mishaps that will prevent the writing from effectively communicating your thesis.

Helpful Websites:
New York Times Writing Tips

Pull Those Weeds: Tips for Concise Writing on YouTube 

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