7 Tips to Improve Your Writing Instantly

There is no magic pill that can improve your writing skills overnight. It takes time to read books by good writers, learn to think critically, develop your writing style, and do practical exercises. However, there are little tricks that can help improve your writing today. We asked essayshark.com, a paper writing service, for tips. With their help, you can enhance the texts you’ve already written and make the next ones even better.

One Sentence, One Idea

Often, readers complain that they lose the thread and logic of the narrative. This happens because the author has difficulty expressing their thoughts, and they mix several arguments or facts in one place. From now on, try to express only one idea in one sentence. This approach will allow you to communicate your thoughts more thoroughly and structurally. In other words, divide any sentence with more than one idea into several. That way, you won’t get lost in the wilderness of your stream of consciousness, and the reader will be able to understand you without having to reread the sentence ten times.

Stick to One Formatting Style

You must agree that it’s incredibly annoying when the text is designed in different styles and according to different rules. Such chaos can even be confusing and discouraging. Let’s look at examples:

• Don’t use italics, bold, or underline words in the text just because “I’m an artist, that’s how I see it.” You can use these formatting elements to emphasize facts that are worth readers’ attention;
• Let it sound trivial, but the text should be written in the same font type with the same indentation and spacing;
• Use the same formatting for lists. You can either put a colon after each item in the list and end with a period at the end of the last or put nothing at all;
• Decide whether you will put periods inside or outside the quotation marks;
• If you started out capitalizing words in the first heading, you should follow this rule in all subsequent headings and subheadings;
• If you use an abbreviation, write it in full the first time you use it and when that word begins a sentence. Otherwise, use only the abbreviation.

This list of rules could go on ad infinitum. You must stick to the same formatting style throughout your writing. Otherwise, your work will look ridiculous and unprofessional.

Watch the Tenses

As a rule, the author has little reason to use different tenses within the same sentence and sometimes within a single paragraph or the entire text. The only exceptions are references to events occurring in different periods. The reader can get confused if you jump from past to future and present. As a result, they won’t understand anything, will be disappointed in themselves, in you, and will stop reading.

How to prevent this? Avoid unreasonable transitions from one tense to another. Are you writing about the past? Use it throughout the narrative. The same applies to what happens in the present and what will or may happen in the future.

Don’t Overuse the Word “That”

Eliminating the word “that” can make a sentence clearer to the reader and more enjoyable to swallow. So, whenever you realize that you can remove that word from a sentence without losing or changing its meaning, do so.

Sentence Fragments Are Evil

Such sentences have no independent clause of the sentence. Technically, they have no subject, verb, and/or subordinate clause. An independent part of a sentence means that the sentence has a complete thought, and you can put a period. Always try to turn fragments into complete sentences, as they can be confusing to readers. How do you check that you don’t have sentence fragments in your text? Make sure that each of your sentences can be understood without help or explanation in other sentences.

Don’t Make Your Introductions Too Long

As a rule of thumb, your introduction can be cut by 50%. It is important to remember that the introduction is intended to inform the reader of what they will be reading, what problem the writer is concerned about, or what pain the reader will help solve in their text. You don’t have to try to put all your ideas and meanings into the introduction. Otherwise, why would you need other parts of the text?

We advise you not to write the introduction until you have finished the main part. It will be easier for you to formulate it after stating your main ideas and organizing your thoughts.

Use Dictionaries

We often use words in the wrong context. This irritates readers and makes us look like fools who can’t be trusted. Every time you have doubts, you should make sure that you really understand the meaning of the words and phrases you are using. Today, some words and phrases are misused so often that you will be shocked to learn what they mean.