I’m one of those obnoxious people who notices typos in a menu and groans out loud when I see yet another Instagram business post heralding a “sneak peak.” It’s more of a curse than a blessing, really, since friends always think I’m judging their grammar, and my husband is afraid to text me without proofreading first.
I get it. The English language is tricky, and many of us sat in our high school or college English classes wishing we were anywhere else. For the record, I didn’t have to diagram a sentence until I was in college, and I found the exercise ridiculous — and I was an English minor! Rather than bore you to tears with rules about language, I thought I’d discuss three simple ways you can become a better writer. No college degree required.
Read everything aloud
If you frequently add or leave out words when you’re typing, this one tip will solve A LOT of problems. Before you send a text or post something or print off a really important work document, slowly read everything out loud to yourself. You’ll be surprised what you notice once you hear yourself saying it.
Reading work aloud is also a good way to gauge whether a sentence is too long or whether you need to add commas or dashes or some other form of punctuation. It helps you realize if you need to change your tone or make something sound more professional. If you don’t trust yourself to read something, ask a friend or colleague or even your child to read it to you. I promise you’ll get the clarity you need.
Keep it simple
I made the mistake in college of majoring in communication (with a print journalism emphasis) and minoring in English. On paper, these may seem like similar fields, but they are vastly different. Journalism is all about simplifying and making copy as clean as possible. English scholars, on the other hand, use the longest phrases they can think of and try to sound as smart as possible by stuffing hundreds of words into a critique of Beowulf.
While I loved my creative writing and young adult literature classes, it quickly became clear that my quick, punchy writing style (with short paragraphs) did not fly in some English classes. I had embraced simplicity and couldn’t go back to meandering on for pages and pages.
No offense to any of you English majors out there, but the real world doesn’t usually want to read 1,500 words about a topic when they could have read it in 300. Your boss isn’t going to be impressed that you used a thesaurus and replaced all the words you thought were boring with “better” ones.
There’s a time for big words and giant passages. One of my favorite books, Anne of Green Gables, often features Anne’s long-winded soliloquies and dramatic imaginings. For the most part, though, people are in a hurry and respond better to short, to-the-point dialogue. “Stated” should be “said.” “Assist” should be “help.” “Utilize” should be “use.” Substitute a shorter word for jargon like this, and you’ll already notice a big difference in your writing.
Give yourself time
If I have to write something big and it just isn’t sounding right, I’ll often work on something else and come back to it in an hour or so. Sometimes I’ll even wait until the next day to finish it up. This isn’t always realistic at your job or if you have to text someone back RIGHT NOW.
While you may not have the luxury of waiting to send something, you CAN spare five minutes or even one minute to give yourself a breather. Check email, go get a drink, or take a walk around the office (or around the block or your house or wherever you are). Then come back and look at whatever you’re writing with fresh eyes. You may notice you have the word and twice or you misspelled your friend’s name (trust me, with the name Lindsay, it happens all the time).
Taking the time to read through something later also gives you the opportunity to rewrite or revise if you need to. The best writers are also the best editors — or, at least, they have the best editors.
So. I’d love to hear if these tips work for you. What are the biggest writing or editing challenges you face?
