Ten Top Tips to Improve Your Writing

As a writer, teacher, and attorney, I can tell you that no matter what field you are in, you use writing every day and people often get their first impression of you through your writing. Whether you transmit a text electronically on your cell phone, send a memo by email at work, or write formal correspondence and briefs, your writing says a lot about you. That’s right. When you write something, the subject is about you every bit as much as it is about the topic. What you say and how you say it will tell people who you are. How well you say it may determine whether the date is made, the sale is closed, or the motion won. And what all of that leads to is how successful you will be in your work and in your life.

We can all improve our writing by following ten simple tips which the best writers use to be successful. I share with you here the ten top tips you can use to improve your writing:

Choose your topic well.

You don’t always get to choose your subject. There may be a particular problem at work that needs to be addressed in a memo. Or there is a motion in a case that requires response. But when you have the choice of topic, perhaps for a professional paper or the company newsletter, choose a subject that is a “hot topic” item in your field. Ask yourself these questions: What are people talking about? What are the most pressing issues in our business today? What do I know that other people might find helpful to solve a problem or to make employees more productive? The point of this tip is that you should always think
before you write and select a topic that will interest others.

Write about what you know or want to learn about.

You’ve heard it said a million times, write about what you know. But that statement does not go far enough. Sure, it is easiest and probably most interesting to your readers when you are writing about a topic that you are already an expert in. Yet many, many writers achieve their best success in writing about subjects they didn’t know about in the beginning. They had an idea about something that intrigued them and that they knew would intrigue others as well. Some writers spend years and years researching a subject before they write about it. Don’t be afraid to expand your horizons.

Be sure to do your homework thoroughly, however. Don’t write about something you have only casually looked into rather than doing the real nitty-gritty research that may be necessary.

Outline before you write.

An outline is a plan that sets out an organization for the ideas in your piece of writing. Whether it is a handwritten short list for a memo or a multi-page document on your word processor outlining a book of many chapters, you will find that an outline will help keep your ideas orderly. When you organize your ideas into an outline, you are planning out a presentation that will seem logical and effective to your audience. Everyone with a computer these days can easily draft out the bullet points of the main ideas of a document in short order. When you have completed your outline, it will help you to write more effectively as you make the transitions from one idea to the next.

Use the rules of sentence construction.

In this day and age of texting on phones and shooting out emails without proofreading, we often forget to just stop and think about what we learned about sentences in grade school. A sentence should have a subject, a verb, and an object, or a subject and a predicate. “I see Sam.” That is an example of the first type: subject, verb, and object. “Sam is a good guy.” That is an example of the second type, where you have a subject followed by a linking verb and a phrase that describes our buddy Sam. This may sound basic, but if you will remember to read your work back to yourself, you will often see that you have fragments instead of sentences. Your writing will be much clearer if you will remind yourself occasionally to stick to proper sentence structure. Get a good grammar book. While you will want to vary your sentence structure to avoid sounding too repetitious, basic sentences are clear. Since communication is what is wanted, clear is good.

Use exciting action words.

Which of these two sentences do you like better?
a. The bear emitted a loud noise.
b. The bear howled.

Both of these sentences say the same thing. But when you read the second sentence, you can almost hear the sound of the bear.

Compare these two examples:
a. She felt very sad.
b. She cried.

Here again we have two sentences which express the same idea. The difference is that the first sentence is a description, while the second has action. If there are two ways to say something, you should choose the way that gives the action rather than description. Description is necessary in some contexts, of course, but if you use action words they will make your writing far more
exciting and interesting.

Use active voice.

This tip is also best explained by example.
a. The flowers were given to her by the boy.
b. The boy gave her the flowers.

Passive voice is where the rightful object of an action is changed to the subject and a passive voice verb follows (a form of “to be” plus a participle). Don’t worry about the technicalities of it. But when you have a thing start the sentence and a person who does the action is tacked on at the end in the “by” phrase, that’s passive voice. Wherever possible, you want to use active voice because it is more…active. Just like in the old saying, “Actions speak louder than words,” “Active voice is more exciting in your writing than passive voice.” (I made that up, but it is true.)

Use short sentences for impact.

Most people use far too many words. A sentence that goes on and on and on will lose people in the middle. Especially nowadays when all the youngsters are abbreviating everything for texting purposes, very often they can’t pay attention long enough to get through an entire sentence in a book if it goes on too long. But even for the adults, it is often very boring to drag your way through an unnecessarily long sentence. Some sentences will have to be long because some ideas are more complex. For the most part, however, being brief is the key to effective communication. If you can say it shorter, by all means do.

Use the rules of paragraph construction.

Paragraphs, like sentences, have a particular way of construction. Remember, all of our writing has the basic purpose of communicating ideas. We meet that purpose by organizing our ideas and expressing them in sentences and in paragraphs. A paragraph should have one main idea. The main idea of the paragraph is usually placed at the beginning. After the main idea, the rest of the sentences in the paragraph may contain examples or explanations of the main idea. In this paragraph, for example, the main idea or topic is about the construction of paragraphs. The explanation of why and how we construct them is contained in the other sentences.

Create a beginning, a middle, and an end.

This tip is not the same as creating an outline. This has more to do with the formalities of the structure of the entire paper or memo or book. It may be a structure more easily seen in a book. We expect to see an introduction, several chapters making up the body of the text, and a conclusion. Every piece of writing should follow this format. Even in a one page memo, there should be a greeting and introduction, the discussion of the main subject, and then a concluding paragraph which may tell the audience what follow up action is expected or required.

Proofread. And then proofread again.

Proofreading is terribly important. Experienced writers do it with everything that they write. Very often, they do it more than once. The second time may be after letting the piece “rest” overnight or, if it is a long work and there is time, up to a week. Check the punctuation, the sentence and paragraph structure, the spelling and grammar. Don’t rely on spell check or grammar check software: machines do not understand context or style. Make sure that you are communicating your points effectively.