SECRETS TO EXCELLENT WRITTEN EXPRESSION
Some people are born writers, when they write, they do not need to think about the sentence structure. Although they do edit their work, but generally the editing part does not take too much of their time.
Some are like me, however. I am not a naturally good writer. I had to acquire the skills over a period of time and then I constantly practiced those skills.
If you also find yourself to be like me, you do not need to be worried since the majority of the writers fall within the latter category. They acquire the writing skills and then practice it a lot.
H͟o͟w͟ ͟t͟o͟ ͟m͟a͟k͟e͟ ͟y͟o͟u͟r͟ ͟w͟r͟i͟t͟i͟n͟g͟ ͟e͟f͟f͟e͟c͟t͟i͟v͟e͟?͟
In today’s post, I am going to give you some tips and techniques on how to make your writing more emphatic, effective, and profound.
Have you ever seen someone write smooth and beautiful paragraphs? I sure have. I used to wonder how do they do it.
Better writing skills do not mean difficult vocabulary and overly complex sentences. Instead, if you want to make your writing look better, keep it simple.
You must understand the structure of your write up. You should be aware of the concepts such as unity of ideas, order and coherence.
Only then should you work towards parallelism, use of loose and periodic sentences, etc.
We will cover these and many other things here but keep in mind that writing skills cannot be perfected overnight. To do this, one has to practice a lot.
A. What are the first steps at writing better?
The first step to write better paragraphs is to understand the basic elements such as Unity of ideas, order of the ideas, coherence, conciseness and completeness.
𝐁. 7 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧
𝟏. 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞
I have seen many aspirants of competitive exams to be very poor at grammar and yet they start directly with learning how to write essay.
Therefore, the first thing for you would be to strengthen your grammar side.
I am not asking you to go into the details, just stick to 12 tenses, active voice and passive voice and a few modal verbs would be enough. But, do it today. Before jumping to essays, you should first correct your grammar.
𝟐. 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦
The sentences are said to have parallel structure if they follow the same grammatical structure within the same sentence.
Look at this example for instance:
i. I love watching sports, playing piano and to read books.
Now if you look at the third clause i.e. ‘to read books’, it does not share the structure with ‘watching sports, playing piano’. In order to rectify this, it should either be ‘reading books’ or it should be ‘I love to watch sports, play piano and read books.’
Similarly, if one clause of the sentence has passive voice, the other should also be a passive voice. If one of them is active, the other should also be active. For example
i. The professor was admired by his colleagues and the students also liked him.
This should be re-written to maintain parallelism as:
‘The professor’s colleagues admired him, and the students also liked him’
Or
‘The professor was admired by the colleagues and also liked by the students.’
𝟑. 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
Normally we write loose sentences in the paragraphs. But if you want to put special emphasis on a paragraph, try periodic sentences.
Periodic sentences are those sentences which have the subclause in front. It creates a semblance of suspense within the sentence.
Let me give you an example of both the sentences here.
Loose sentence: She got the top position in the company despite a slanderous campaign, fierce opposition and non-cooperative boss.
Periodic sentence: Despite a slanderous campaign, fierce opposition and non-cooperative boss, she got the top position in the company.
In the second sentence, the main clause or the predicate is at the end. This gives the sentence more weight and suspense.
𝟒. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬:
Writing short sentences is an extremely powerful technique. Most people write long sentences which makes it hard for the readers to understand the core idea.
What you should do is to keep a strict between the two. 7 out of 10 sentences should be short, whereas only 3 can be long sentences.
If you are in the habit of writing long sentences, you should break them up into two or three depending on its length. Try it and you will see a lot of improvement.
𝟓. 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞:
I have often noticed that some candidates are in the habit of writing sentences in passive voice more than they write in active voice. Avoid that.
Keep your sentences in active voice. Again, keep the ratio to 7:3.
Passive voice not only elongates the sentences and use up space and energy, it also does not convey the idea in active and direct form and thus, sometimes fails to engage the reader.
We often make passives where they should not be.
For instance, John eats an apple. An apple is being eaten by John. I have never heard any native speaker being so helpless before an apple.
𝟔. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐲
Many aspirants are obsessed with vocabulary. They keep on memorizing difficult words. Avoid writing sentences like this:
Some homo sapiens have the obnoxious habit of putting up a proposition and thereby transmitting the scheme by resorting to the flummoxing usage of ornate and embellished lexicon.
This could be written as:
Some people are verbose.
𝟕. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐲:
Redundancy is when you use some expressions which are not required.
For example, she returned back from college. In this sentence, the word back is redundant since return already conveys the meaning of being back.
Let us look at another example:
He quickly ran from the office. Here the word quickly is redundant since running conveys the idea of being quick.
There are many other expressions like this. I woke up at 6.00 am in the morning. AM already has the meaning of morning in it.
So, that's all for Part-1. Stay tuned for Part-2 which I will upload today in the evening. Keep visiting the blog page for more content like this. Share on your wall or with your friends.
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| SECRETS TO EXCELLENT WRITTEN EXPRESSION |