Developing Writing Skills

Writing Skills are no less important than spoken skills. The general notion is that only spoken skills are important but the fact is that it is the  good writing skills that finally contribute to good spoken skills also. Giving undue importance to spoken skills may leave you a poor speaker and a poor writer of English. Good writing skills are very crucial to a professional career. To be a successful professional, you must be a good speaker possessing good writing skills.

1. Writing Correct Sentences

Writing correct sentences is the first step towards good writing skills. It is a basic requirement of good writing skills. Your sentences should be grammatically correct with correct punctuation. You must use appropriate words as per your subject matter.

2. Paragraph Writing

Next step after being able to write grammatically correct sentences is the ability to write good paragraphs. Paragraphs are building blocks of larger pieces of writing like stories, novels, essays and reports  therefore writing effective and well structured paragraphs is necessary.

Elements of a Paragraph (Structure of a Paragraph)

A paragraph is made up of three elements:-

Introducer or Topic Sentence

Generally the first sentence introduces the topic of the paragraph therefore the first sentence is termed as introducer or the topic sentence.

Developers (Supporting Sentences)

The sentences after the topic sentence move the discussion ahead by supporting sentences. Thus these sentences are known as developers because they develop the idea further.

Terminator (Concluding Sentence)

The sentence that terminates the discussion by giving a concussion of the discussion is known as terminator or the concluding statement.

Features of a Paragraph

Unity:-Unity in paragraph stands for the togetherness of the ideas. Ideally a paragraph should have one central idea and the subordinating ideas. If it has a different idea or another important idea it should switch over to another paragraph.

Coherence:-Coherence means all the sentences are linked together in one paragraph. In other words, the first sentence automatically leads to the second sentence. Similarly, the second sentence automatically leads to the third sentence and so on.

3. How can you groom good writing skills?

Grooming good writing skills takes time. Major contributors to good writing skills are reading newspapers, magazines, articles, reviews, blogs, reports, editorials, novels, and other books besides listening to good speakers’ lectures, speeches, debates, interactions, discussions, documentaries, and commentaries and watching movies. However, you must know that you must have good command over English grammar and a good stock of words to have good writing skills. Besides the above, you must write frequently to check where you stand and improve time to time

Whenever you intend to write anything, you can write a good piece of writing if you go through a systemic writing procedure as discussed below: -

Step 1 Preparation and Planning: -

Decide the Topic

Decide the purpose of the piece you want to write. Be sure what you want to write and what the purpose of the piece of writing you intend to write is.  The objective/s of your writing must be clear to you. You can write down your objective/s. Be clear in your topic, approach and purpose.

Brainstorm 

Next step is to collect the material from all around i.e. all sorts of sources required for it. These sources may be the internet, journals, magazines, newspapers, films, documentaries, expert interviews, and libraries and so on. 

Decide the Information

After brainstorming, finalize the information that you want to share with your audience. Put all the pieces of information together piece by piece. Now select the information that is relevant and deselect all the pieces or parts of the pieces that are irrelevant. 

Decide your audience 

Remember that you must know very well who your audience is, otherwise your piece of writing may fail to produce desired effect or it may be rejected by the audience. The truth is that the language of your piece of writing must be according to your audience. You must speak in the language of the audience. If your audience is a common man and you speak the language of experts, your piece of writing is sure to be rejected.

Organize the material

Now you have to organize the material that you want to share with your audience. It means you have to decide which topic will come first and what next and what next till how you will end your discussion. You can make an outline of your content.

Step 2 Drafting:- 

Once you have collected the material and decided outlines of your piece of writing, you can prepare the first draft of your composition. The following points shall be crucial for your writing.

        i. Avoid bombastic, highly literary or pompous language:- 

Highly bombastic and literary words will lead you where you never intended to reach. Therefore simple words are always the best choice.

2. Use concrete words:-  

Concrete words will make your writing hit the bull’s eye. The audience would always like to read your writings more and more. Avoid the words that don’t give the exact meaning. 

3. Avoid wordiness :-

“You can suffocate a thought by expressing it in too many words.”                    Frank Clark 

“Words are like leaves, and where they most abound      

  Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”                                             Alexander Pope  

Keep your writing concise and precise. It is always effective especially in the writings of science and technology.                                                                                                                       

4. Prefer active to passive voice. 

Active voice is easy to understand therefore using active vice is always a good choice however sometimes passive voice is also necessary. In such cases you must know where to use the passive voice. Passive voice is used when action is more important than its doer.

5. Maintain parallelism

Maintaining parallelism is in fact being aware of the beauty of language. If you are using gerunds in description, using infinitive in such description will spoil the beauty of language. Parallel constructions make language beautiful.

6. Use action words not long nouns. 

In other words, using verbs is better than long nouns. Verbs can be converted into nouns by using their infinitive or gerundial forms. If you want to use the adjective forms of verbs, you can use them in participle forms. They will create much better effect than long nouns..

7. Avoid Clichés:-

People become habitual of using clichés and they use clichés without a thought or use them again and again. Remember by doing so you are adding husk to your writing rather than solid grains. Use a cliché only when you know its meaning and you can recognize the occasion to use it. Some clichés are here:- “Last but not the least”, “ Finally”, “Actually” and so on.

8. Avoid circumlocution. 

Remember that your purpose of the writing is to give the audience a clear view of your thoughts thus any attempt to play with words may mar the clarity of thoughts. Stick to plain and simple and clear language..

9. Maintain unity in the paragraphs:-

A good paragraph progresses systematically maintaining coherence between the sentences. In other words, 

one sentence automatically leads to the sentence following it. The whole paragraph appears to be a unit and 

the entire paragraphs amount to the overall information leading to a conclusion. This is known as unity of 

the paragraph. A good piece of writing must contain such paragraphs.

10. Avoid Curtness 

Being too short in your statement towards the audience may lead to an insulting attitude towards the audience. It is known as curtness. The audience may feel insulted. See the following reply:-

• “With reference to your application of 14 May, 2007, for the post of Assistant Manager in our Sales Department, you are hereby informed that we are not able to offer this position to you.”

                  Revised version

        “Thank you very much for your application of 14 May, 2007 for the post of Assistant Manager   in our Sales Department.

         We are sorry that at present we are not able to offer you this position. But we have put on record your qualifications and experience along with your application and résumé on our files. If in future, there is any opportunity, we shall certainly consider you again. We appreciate your interest in our organization. 

Thank you very much.”

Therefore don’t be curt but be complete in your reply.

11. Adopt ‘You Attitude”

• Consideration for reader’s interests, needs and, desires is known as You Attitude or You Approach or You Psychology in the business world.

You should maintain such a style as if you were directly addressing the audience. He will feel a personal touch in such communication. See the following example:-

Crowd Approach	You Approach
(i) We are pleased when we receive suggestions from our customers	(i) We are grateful for the suggestions you have made
(ii) This book will help the readers in writing good English	(ii) This book will help you in writing good English.
(iii) We feel sorry when we find that our customers are not satisfied with our merchandise	(iii) We are sorry that you are not satisfied with the electric kettle you bought from us.

Step 3 Revising and Editing

Good writers can never be satisfied with whatever they write in one go. Every time you revisit a piece of writing, you would find some shortcomings. and would like to make some changes.. You shall have to spend hours to create a piece of writing that lives up to the expectations of the audience. Sometimes you may have to reject a piece of communication prepared after investing a lot of time and rewrite it afresh.

The process of revision and editing may involve the following steps:-

i. Reread the entire manuscript.

ii. Check for grammar, punctuation and spellings.

iii. Delete unnecessary words, parts or portions

iv. Augment the depleted sections

v. Rewrite the paragraphs if the need be.

vi. Move around paragraphs where they are suitable.

vii.Rewrite the beginnings and endings if they are not impressive.

viii.Check for consistent flow of thought

ix.Avoid repetition and introducing variety

x.Using suitable transition words where the thought changes

xi.Choose appropriate tone and style according to the subject.

 

Step 4.Proofreading a document

Finally proofread the entire manuscript on a hardcopy. Proofreading a soft copy is not a good idea. The glare of the screen will hide the mistakes. You can catch mistakes better on a hard copy.

***