Writing Tips: 12 Steps to Make Sure Your Writing Is Perfect

This guide provides a clear, practical overview of writing tips: 12 steps to make sure your writing is perfect, with useful context, important details, and straightforward takeaways for everyday readers.

1. Add structure to your writing

It is okay to write whatever you feel in your personal diary, but To bring your thoughts together effectively to others, you need to have some order in your writing:

2. Consider your readers' questions

One way to improve your writing is by putting yourself in your audience's shoes. Have you given them enough context so that they understand what has been written? If you haven't achieved this then you need to fill in what you have missed.

3. Make sure you know what concepts you're writing about

In the words of Albert Einstein, ' If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself! ' With this in mind, before you write anything, make sure, in your head, you are able to explain what you are going to write about to a 6-year-old. If you have a result to achieve with your writing then think about what that result is. It's crucial that you have a clear purpose to your writing, and you need to then stick to it.

4. Tighten what you have written

Quite often, we write the way we talk and that's not a negative. In fact, it keeps our writing conversational, however, you don't want to be rambling on as this makes your writing hard to read:

5. Avoid using filler phrases and words

We are all guilty of overusing specific words which don't really have much impact on our writing. Filler phrases and words may add meaning or some color to your text, but quite often they don't contribute anything positive as they are just clutter.

6. Don't overdo prepositional phrases

It's quite easy to overuse prepositional phrases and all they do is make your writing over complex and wordy. Where possible, try and simplify your use of prepositions, and you will soon see that you're writing becomes clearer.

7. Avoid using adverbs to replace weak words

Adverbs often end in 'ly' and modify adjectives and words. It is ok to use them occasionally but if you find that you use them a lot, it's likely that you're using weak words. For instance, if you have written ' run really quickly,' change this to ' sprinted.'

8. Keep sentences simple

Yes, literature is full of complex sentences, but you're probably not trying to write a literary masterpiece. Therefore, it's better to have uncomplicated short sentences which are easy to read. A good tip however is to make sure you vary your sentence length as this will ensure that your writing flows nicely.

9. Contractions

English speakers will use contractions such as 'didn't, can't, they're, I'm, we're, and you're'. If you don't use contractions, your writing will sound too formal.

10. Use simple words

It's great to have a rich vocabulary and be able to use big words in your writing, however, unless you are trying to be poetic, it's better to keep your language direct and simple.

11. Forget grammar rules

By reading out what you have written you'll be able to work out if your writing flows well. If you come across parts where you stumble, you may need to change a complex sentence to something that's more simple, for example. Remember, it's ok to start sentences using conjunctions unless you are writing something that is formal. It is even ok to end sentences using prepositions. Ultimately, you want you're writing to be as natural as possible

12. Transcribe yourself

Consider recording yourself when you're talking as you can learn a lot about writing in a conversation if you use this tip:

Record a conversation that you've had with somebody else. After you've done this, transcribe a few minutes of the conversation that you have recorded and make sure it's word-for-word. Next, you'll need to remove any filler or false starts. Now you will have some conversational writing. By transcribing and editing you will soon pick up what you need to do and what you should avoid.