Always think about who you are writing for, who will be your potential readers. Equally important is the purpose of your text: are you preparing to submit an essay for your final exams, or writing a motivation letter for a prospective employer? Or do you just want to draw attention to an important issue you care about in an Insta story? Accordingly, you need to be careful with your vocabulary, sentence structure and phrasing.
Many people make the mistake of wanting to be much more sophisticated in their writing than they are in their everyday life, but they achieve the opposite effect. Their sentences end up littered with misused strange phrases, with constructions that are supposed to be more sophisticated but are in fact more ‘cluttered’, with words that are supposed to be more appropriate but are in fact grammatically incorrect.
The only thing you should keep in mind is to avoid casual, slangy phrases if they do not fit the type of your text, and to try to minimise word repetition (although this is not always possible).
A clear layout makes a better impression (Photo: Pixabay)
Even in your everyday texts, make sure that your reader understands what you are trying to express. If your text is longer, be sure to break it down into logical units (paragraphs) and make sure your sentences and parts of sentences are well-connected to each other.
It is important that your letters should be legible, even if they’re not particularly nice. A fine piece of writing without scribbles and with a clear layout will make a much better impression than if you cross out words and sentences a thousand times and scribble them all over the place. Spelling also helps to produce a quality text. If you are even a little unsure of the spelling of a word, use a rule book.
Writing – whether formal or informal – is a practical activity, so you will improve yourself most by writing as much as you can, as consciously as possible, thinking through and checking for mistakes. The importance of reading is not negligible, either, as it affects your spelling, your vocabulary and your knowledge about the appropriate structure of the text.
