Knowing How to Write Well

Communication skills are at the heart of what it means to be a student. Whether in college, university, or on the job, knowing how to write well is not only an essential skill, but also an important part of fostering good overall communication. Despite differences in study, improving your ability to communicate your ideas and concepts clearly will come in handy.

Planning and necessary preparing before you write is critical to your paper’s success. Teachers are famous for requesting an outline before any written draft of an essay. The reason is that an outline is highly effective for organizing your thoughts, ideas, and arguments. Writing without an outline is flying blind—make an outline and make your life easier.

“Does spelling count” is often heard in elementary, and even high school, but will seldom be heard in a university or college classroom – everything counts! A major part of writing is precision and discipline: which means editing, editing, and editing. Lazy mistakes, errors, and thoughtless words on a page will do little to impress your instructors or help you get your point across to the reader. Edit your work!

Often students will try to pump-up their essays with large words, clichés, wordiness, and poor grammatical and sentence structure. Make sure you approach your properly indented paragraphs with caution, and use words you know, always side with plain English, and try to avoid clichés that are commonplace.

Read over your work and be thorough – university and college professors will not take kindly to phrases that make no sense or that they cannot understand; there are no part marks.

To be a strong writer, a helpful place to start is to become a strong reader. Reading helps you understand structure, style, and content that will all inform and better your writing.

Most schools have writing resources to aid you with your assignments – take advantage of these services. Good luck!

Article courtesy of: http://www.schoolfinder.com/news/article.asp?ID=2705&SectionID=7