AaronTurpen.com

The title of this one should give away the fact that this article is not really aimed towards writing professionals.  Instead, I though something should be said to those who write as a side note to their normal career.  Maybe you work in IT and your boss expects you to occasionally write presentations, reports, or blog posts.  Maybe you’re a commodities trader and your business could use the marketing boost that some decent articles and a newsletter might provide.  Whatever your situation, you’ve found yourself being required to write things for other people to read and are a little unsure of yourself.

Well, have no fear.  Good writing requires only that you understand some fundamentals and build some simple, proven habits to bolster them.  These are the beginning skills a professional writer will foster and will take mediocre writing to the level of good writing quite quickly.  The ultimate goal here, really, is to get rid of some of the baggage we all have thanks to the way we’re taught to write in school and to avoid common mistakes.

I’ve covered many of the basics before, but will repeat them here and add a few new ones that might help non-professionals find an easier track towards good writing.

Make Proofreading a Habit

This one is universal and has been repeated often here at AaronTurpen.com.  After you’ve completed writing your material, set it aside for as long as possible (a full day is best, but an hour is OK if time lines are short) and then read through it.  This gives you a clearer perspective on what you’ve written and will help you do several things: see typos and misspellings, fix repetitious words and phrases, re-arrange material for better flow, and otherwise clean up your work.  Most shoddy writing can be fixed with a few minutes’ proofing.

Making this a habit will eventually lead to proofreading as you write, eliminating your most common mistakes before they happen.

Read It Out Loud

Once you’ve completed your writing, read it back to yourself out loud.  Does it stay together?  Are parts of it clunky or hard to understand?  If something is hard to read out loud, it’s definitely hard to read period.  This will force you to simplify sentences and keep on point.  After a while, you’ll get in the habit of writing out loud in your head.

Use Punctuation For Readability, Not “Grammar”

The worst thing they teach in schools is “proper grammar.”  This involves a lot of memorization and rote learning about the way punctuation is “correctly” used.  Most of it is detrimental to good writing.  Sure, it might look great to your High School English teacher, but for the man on the street?  It’s hoity and makes no sense.  Punctuation should make sense.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every sentence shouldn’t have a period, a question mark, etc. at the end, but it also means that just because grammar says a semi-colon or comma is supposed to be there (or not be there) the sentence or paragraph won’t read better if it isn’t (or is).  Use commas, semi-colons, and hyphens as ways to create pauses, to break up ideas, or to create better readability and flow.  If, when reading your work out loud, you notice that a sentence is a little long or seems hard to grasp, it could probably do with something to break it up.  Either add a comma (or two) or cut it in half and make two sentences.

Remember that most reading takes place verbally (if in our heads) because language is, fundamentally, meant to be spoken.  Use that knowledge to make your writing easier to read.  Here are a few quick rules about punctuation marks:

• Commas are the carpenter’s hammer of the writing trade.  While periods are the nails, commas are what pounds them in.  Use commas to create a pause, make a list, or otherwise divvy up a sentence into easily digestible bits.
• Semi-colons are probably the least-used and most useful of the punctuation marks.  Often, two short sentences that appear choppy can be combined with a semi-colon to make them smooth.  Imagine the spots where you’d arch an eyebrow, give a smirk, or otherwise signal to someone you’re talking to that something is important; that’s where a semi-colon goes.
• Parenthesis are probably the most over-used of the punctuation marks that could stand being underused.  More often than not, they’re used when they shouldn’t be.  Much of the time, they can be replaced with commas, a colon, or dashes.  For you programming types, nesting parenthesis in writing is never good.
• Colons are used to make examples and that’s it.  Don’t use them for anything else.  It’s distracting.
• Dashes are very useful for encapsulating an idea within a larger idea.  So if you have two sentences to write, but one looks better when said inside the other, use dashes rather than parenthesis to add it in.  It automatically tells the reader’s brain that a brand new idea is about to come and shouldn’t be confused with the original one they’ve been reading.
• Question marks and exclamation points are how you add character to a paragraph or page.  Question marks should always end a question, of course, but questions can be used for more than just asking questions.  They can be existential, make a heavy point, or just make the reader ask for an answer.  Do you think questions are just questions?  Think again.  Exclamations, on the other hand, should be used very sparingly.  In fact, if you aren’t writing a personal email, a crappy blog post, or a text message to your friends, don’t use exclamations.  They are the purview of Internet marketers and should be avoided as much as possible.

Don’t Ramble; Follow the 5th Grader’s Basics

Last, but definitely not least, don’t ramble along in your writing.  If you have trouble with this, set word count goals or other limits to force your writing to be concise.  When proofing, trim the fat and keep it all on topic.

Of course, none of this means you should totally ignore all of the English classes you had to take in school.  Everything you learned up to about the 5th grade is probably relevant.  Capitalize the first word of the sentence, capitalize proper nouns, don’t use five exclamation points when you really need just one, and for hell’s sakes, don’t rush it!

Take your time, do it right, and eventually it will become easier and easier.  Writing is all about practice. Great writing is about being a genius – ask anyone who knows me!!!

There are three types of bad language in writing: bad grammar, over-use of jargon and confusing terms, and expletives.  Today I’m going to talk about the latter two.  Starting with jargon and what I like to refer to as “five dollar words and phrases.”

Over-Using $5 Words

Like most writers, I read a lot.  I read commercially printed materials, online stuff, academic reports and studies, and more.  One thing I love about writing, actually, is that I get exposed to a wide variety of information on a regular basis.  This also means I’m exposed to a lot of badly written material.  Surprisingly, this is most often found in two places, neither of which would seem to  make logical sense.

I see bad writing more often in academic material and online sales and marketing materials than I do anywhere else.  By academic materials, I don’t mean just term papers and lazy work from students, I mean published, even peer-reviewed literature in accepted and sometimes prestigious journals of science.  I also see garbage on relatively big-name company websites, not just with get-rich-quick garbage sites (those are guaranteed to give you a headache with their sloppy writing).

In academics and sales, the two things most often over-used are jargon and needlessly complex sentences.  If this makes sense to you, you’re a born tech marketer:

“Harmonized, relational opportunity to incubate synergistic networks.”

That phrase says exactly nothing, but it sounds great and uses a lot of buzz words that upper management types find appealing.  Many marketing sites are full of that stuff.  In fact, someone in middle management at a software firm once told me that he used the Internet Bullshit Generator to create keyphrases for use in his own team progress reports.  He won awards and acclaim from his bosses for his “team-oriented, synergistic attitude and performance.”

Another problem are sentences that are too complex and could easily be broken into smaller parts to make a paragraph that is much easier to read.  You see this in academia regularly.  A lot of commas, dashes, semi-colons, and so forth are used to make three or four sentences into one.

“The relational database was then referenced with a cross-tool to pull a randomized, Roth scaled sample; resulting in a mean attribute of 7.43% on the Roth and subjective samples from the test group were then compared and given a mean Roth of 5.19% – the results showing a clear disassociation between the control and test groups.”

The whole sentence there is a little less than synergistic.  In order to keep from shaming the researchers and scientists involved, I won’t reference the original study from which I quoted that.  It’s horrific and the entire abstract and conclusions section of the 12-page research synopsis reads that way.

Both of these are examples of people who are either too full of themselves to relate to other people in normal English or who are so absorbed in their non-writing work that they see the written material that it culminates into as inconsequential.

In both cases, they’re wrong.

Marketing materials boil down to how they’re perceived, which is all about how they read and look.  Same with internal business documents and so forth.  If your company has a culture that thrives on B.S. terms like my friend’s above, you might want to reconsider your career choice.

If your scientific endeavors are not all about the paper you will be publishing to explain your work, you need to reconsider some of your viewpoints on what science is.  Science is as much about disseminating breakthroughs and study results as it is about accomplishing those breakthroughs and studies.

Swear Words (Expletives) in Writing

Moving on to another subject within the definition of “bad language,” we come to actual bad language.  The kind of stuff that got our mouths washed out with soap, made us feel cool when we were 8, and that is generally heard around construction sites and comedy clubs.

Literature has a broad range of appeal and there is certainly a place for the use of expletives in it.  Most of the writing that I do is for venues that look down upon (or flatly won’t print) any type or variation of swear words.  This is not generally a problem for me and most professional writing will use few, if any, of those curses.

In some formats, especially those that are considered “not safe for the office,” throwing out the occasional F-bomb is considered kosher.  I have a website on which I use light swearing occasionally, usually as part of the humorous intent of the site itself and the subject matter at hand.  It’s a rare exception rather than the rule.

So far as I’m concerned, the type of swearing that would be acceptable depends upon the venue and audience being aimed for.  If the written piece is a work of fiction aimed towards a more gritty style, then swearing (even heavily) is probably just fine.  If, however, it is journalistic or meant to engage a general audience, then it is definitely not OK.

Conclusion

However you treat bad language, make sure it’s done with good judgment.  Knowing where, when, and why you are using the words and phrases you’re using is important.  If you’re unsure of what you should do with a curse word or phrase, or if you’re not sure that a specific type of jargon or sentence structure will be acceptable, then work around it (without using it).  It’s always safer to break large sentences into smaller ones and it’s always a good idea to explain jargon rather than assuming that your audience is familiar with it.  Finally, it’s always better to use a lighter expletive (such as “dagnabbit” instead of damn) if you aren’t sure it fits in.

I’ve talked about proofreading and self-editing before, which I consider The Most Vital, Yet Boring Skill Good Writing Requires.  It’s essential, though, to going from an amateur with a lot of hopes and dreams to being considered a professional who’s considered to be such by his or her peers and publishers.

In that last article, I covered general proofing and editing.  Today, I’m going to show you three basic steps that, once you make them a habit, will immediately improve your writing.

1 – Learn to Proofread Effectively

The fastest and most profitable way to do this is to do it for someone else.  If you have a friend who’s a writer, can find jobs doing basic editing or proofing work, etc. then this is a way to learn to become effective in proofreading.

I do a fair amount of editing work now simply because I took these jobs as fast money turnarounds and have found them to be educational as well as profitable.  An editing job on a 30-page ebook, for instance, won’t pay too much (maybe $50), but it can be done in an hour or less if you’re in a hurry and in two hours if you do a good job of it.  I do a good job of it.  What I learned by taking these quick payoff jobs is that they also train you to be a critical reader.

This skill is important, especially for a writer.  As a critical reader, you’ll begin looking at your own work and realizing what is too wordy, what kind of punctuation is distracting or over-used, when words are too often repeated, etc.  Probably the most common thing that writers do beyond using boring cliche’s in their work is to repeat words (especially adjectives) too many times.

This: “I went down to the store to get some great ice cream because there’s nothing better than eating great ice cream on a Saturday afternoon.  It’s a great way to cool down and feel relaxed.”

Becomes this once the over-use of the word “great” is changed: “I went down to the store to get some cold, tasty ice cream because there’s nothing better than frozen cream on a Saturday afternoon.  It’s a great way to cool down and feel relaxed.”

Neither paragraph is going to win a Pulitzer, but the second one is obviously much easier on the eyes.

2 – Recognize Your Weaknesses

Everyone has them.  Superman had kryptonite, Rocky had Adrien, and I have the over-use of contractions.  For most of the writing I do, a colloquial style with spoken-word type writing is what the editor wants.  Sometimes, however, it isn’t and I usually hear from them (loudly).  I will admit that the hardest thing for me to do when writing is to edit out the contractions and use the long form of the word or phrase.  “Can’t” must become “cannot” and doing it too much gives me a headache.

Many writers have similar weaknesses in their general style that they have to overcome for some projects.  Other writers, especially those starting out, will have a lot of them that they haven’t quite ironed away with habitual practice.

For some, it’s spelling, as the dreaded red underlines appear continually as they type.  For others, it’s the repetitive use of a handful of words.  Others still find that they swap heterographs or homophones.  “Their” becomes “they’re” and “to” becomes “two” more often than not.

Whatever your weakness, pinpoint what it is and work hard to eliminate it.

3 – Outline and Organize Your Work

Nothing spells “unprofessional” or “rewrite” in bolder terms than a disorganized article.  Even the most professional of writers will occasionally slip up (i.e. “get in a hurry”) and produce a badly-organized piece of drivel.  It happens.

Personally, I use several techniques to organize my writing, depending on the size of the piece of how involved it is.  Small 200-word (or so) pieces really don’t require a lot of organization to make them right.  For those, I focus on making each paragraph a separate idea and can then go back and just reorganize paragraphs fairly easily if the flow isn’t quite there.  Shorter pieces require less concentration, though, so they usually come out right the first time.

For a longer piece, say 500 or 1,000 words, I’ll use a simple outline.  The outline for this article, for instance, had the three points I wanted to hit and a few phrases under each to illustrate (to me) what I wanted to include there.  In this way, each section of the work becomes a miniature article that’s easier to concentrate on.  Incidentally, this also makes it easier to come back should I be interrupted while writing.

For a very long piece such as an article series or a small booklet-sized piece, I use mind mapping.  If you don’t know what that is, Google it.  I don’t use any fancy software, just a pen and a legal pad.  Sometimes I use colored pencils if it’s a longer piece as the colors can be used to organize articles within a series or ideas that are distinctly separate.  It’s a great technique and I’ve find that when I’m having a rough time coming up with a “hook” or an “angle” for the article in question, the use of a mind map often makes one readily apparent and boosts insight in tying disparate research together.

As an example of mind mapping at work, I did a series recently for NaturalNews.com on mercury toxicity.  It launched because a single article I’d written on mercury toxicity, dental amalgams and the FDA’s upcoming reconsideration of their safety promoted a tidal wave of reader feedback and information.  So it was decided that I should do a longer, more in-depth series on dental amalgams (“silver fillings”) and mercury toxicity.  I didn’t have a real angle in mind as I did preliminary research, but one quickly emerged as I tied some of that research together in a mind map and saw how much of it revolved around dental professionals.  Viola!  An angle for the series was born.  That series should be publishing very soon.

Wrapping Up

These three things should help you become a better writer, and quickly.  Just remember to proofread and to do it for others as well as yourself, to know your own weaknesses, and to organize your writing before you write.