Thursday, March 06, 2008

Dramatically Improve Your Article Writing Almost Immediately Using These Five Easy Ways - Part 1


Is Your Writing Ready Yet?
You’ve chosen a topic, narrowed down the focus, perhaps drafted an outline to keep your writing organized and now you’re ready to write. How well the finished piece, whether an article, essay, paper, editorial, composition, report, letter, ad, blog posts or other copy in English “comes out” will depend on a few additional key aspects. If you don’t want editors ticked off, or your reader heading for the hills, you’ll need to consider these improvement aspects to fine tune the “details” of your writing.

How to Dramatically Improve
You can dramatically improve your article and other writing almost immediately in these five easy ways.

1. Use Spell Check
Sometimes, even most of the time, it isn’t your fault. The keys stick on the keyboard, you miss a key strike, you stumble over a frequently misspelled word or you simply make a mistake. We all do it. It’s no big deal, but it ticks off editors and readers alike when a string of misspellings mars our writing. On occasion, my computer software will change a word from what I’ve typed in to another, incorrect, one. Does that ever happen to you?

How to Avoid Bad Spelling
Bad spelling whether from a mistake or uncertainty is avoidable though. How? By using the spell check function in MS Word or other word processing software. Whenever those squiggly little red lines show up under a word, check the spelling option on your computer. Don’t forget, as a writer you should have a good dictionary or two on hand too. Sometimes, the computer will not “know” a perfectly good word like “blog”.

2. Use Grammar Check
Alright, so I’m a university level English language professor and a grammarian, but you don’t have to be. If you have gaps in your English grammar skills or knowledge (don’t we all), then don’t worry. There’s an easy cure. Use the spell check function of MS Word to keep an eye on things for you. Whenever those squiggly little green lines show up under a phrase or sentence, it’s time to look at the suggested correction or whip out your English grammar text reference. If you don’t have a good one then it’s time for a trip to your local bookstore. Capiche?

In part two of this two-part article, we’ll look at the use of relevant facts and quotes, statistics and references to boost the authority of your writing and provide an added measure of improvement to your articles.


Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 80 countries. Get your FREE E-books,"If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" or "7 Techniques to Motivate Your English Language Learners and Make Your Classes More Dynamic" by requesting the title you want at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The spelling and typing errors are common but usually when I write a word with a mispelling and I have a doubt I write it in two or more ways to observe them carefully, and then choose the meaning that visually I think the most correct. The use of automatic spellchecker is easier and faster than the method that I use, but I think I can learn more with my way of doing things and a good dictionary.

write articles said...

Excellent tips. Really useful stuff .Never had an idea about this, will look for more of such informative posts from your side.. good job...Keep it up