What are your best tips on improving writing quality?
Tanoy Chowdhury
78 replies
From the past few months, I have been actively working on improving my writing skills. From your personal learnings, what are the best ideas, practices and tips for improving writing?
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Miriam Dorsett@miriamdorsett
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Hemingway is really easy to use and helps a ton: https://hemingwayapp.com
Night Eye
@filipminev I will recommend to also https://relanote.com - for connecting research topics is perfect. Disclaimer I am on of the founders.
@filipminev Under rated comment. Hemingway is excellent. It stops you from using so many adverbs in your copy. It's changed how I write and how I think about writing with all the silly superlatives I use to use. I notice so many websites use "supercharge", this is now my current pet peeve.
Read fiction books! The amount of vocabulary, syntax, narrative construction, and style stuff you pick up from reading novels is really shocking and is a great way to improve how you write.
Night Eye
@theclairbyrd Really good advice. Thanks to fiction books I am in the computer space. They gave the imagination to believe that I can make things.
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@theclairbyrd Yes, fiction books are great for picking new words, and learning more about sentence structure. I remember reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini," it has made a lasting impact on me. Do you have a favourite non-fiction book?
Here are few top recommended book that can help you to improve your copy writing.
The Halbert Copywriting Method Part III: Reveals the editing formulas and patterns found in the works of history's best copywriters. https://amzn.to/3snDeDu
The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: Legendary copywriter and ad man Joseph Sugarman provides proven guidelines and expert advice on what it takes to write copy that will entice, motivate, and move customers to buy. https://amzn.to/3x45zCg
The Boron Letters: These letters date back to 1984, so don't expect tips about the Internet, email, & social media. Instead, expect advice that goes deeper than modern media. https://amzn.to/2Q3PFr3
Ogilvy on Advertising: This book is a comprehensive guide on all the facets of advertising. https://amzn.to/2Q4NELj
Few book suggestions on psychology and persuasion, as they’re the basis of good copy.
Influence: You’ll learn the six universal principles of influence and how to use them to become a skilled persuader. https://amzn.to/3tw2rgb
Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold, and others come unstuck. https://amzn.to/3n4SjJ1
Contagious: In Contagious, Berger reveals the secret science behind
word-of-mouth and social transmission. https://amzn.to/2QBwXqE
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@alok_gangrade This is an interesting list. I had heard about a few of them before, thanks for reminding me.
I would add, know your audience. Most of my writing is for HS aged students and teachers. I use Hemingway Editor, to keep my writing direct and clear for this audience. https://www.producthunt.com/post...
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@david_grills This is a very important point, David. I have been writing for some time now, and I have realized that if a writer totally ignores the target audience, then all the hard work turns out to be futile.
Troopr
Do some quality thinking
Hi Tanoy,
I too have been working towards the very same goal like you.
Writing is a very investing quality which takes time to grow. But as we are into it, here are 3️⃣ things that helped me a lott!
1. Read Read Read!📚
Read as much as possible! You might want to focus on a particular genre, which is great but, do make a point to try different genres every once in a while just so that you know how writing styles and tonality changes for different audiences and moods.
2. Maintaining Notes📒
As you read, maintain a small notebook to jot down words, sentences, phrases that you find interesting. Go through your notes on end of the day and before starting your day.
You can have digital notes but I strongly suggest Pen✏️ and Paper🗒.
Our brain remembers better when we actually write those words with our own hands.
Every time you write, it gets etched a little deeper into your memory.
3. WOW (Word of the Week) & POW (Phrase of the Week) 📜-
This one helped me a ton!! 🌟
What I did for myself was that, once I had a good amount of notes ready, I picked 1word and 1phrase for the week and I would use them as much as possible when I talked to anyone, when I wrote emails, or when I was engaging with any social media community, or when I was writing my daily journal, literally EVERY WHERE 🔥.
I would purposely frame my sentences in way that I get to use my WOW and POW.
How this one helped❓
We all know a lot of words but when we actually sit down to write something, we fall short of words 🤔. We can't recollect them when we actually need them 😟.
📌This exercise helps us to REGISTER WORDS IN MEMORY📌
We understand how to use them or how to not use them. When is it accurate to use it, how the audience react when we use it, etc
I believe we grasp better when we apply our learnings.
And this one will definitely help to elevate our writing level. 🎯
Hope this helps you Tanoy.
Do tell me if you find it useful. Good luck and keep writing!👍😁
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@juilee_mahimkar This answer is not just insightful, it's a thing of beauty. Juilee, I cannot appreciate enough for taking time out and writing such a detailed answer. Of course, this answer is very very helpful for me. And, I'm sure this will catch every other aspiring writer's attention. Keep writing, keep inspiring.
Best way is to take a really good training on writing better content,
I am currently writing here http://oshodioke.com , but would really love a genuine rating on my writing skills:) good or bad. Thanks in advance ukanephilemon@gmail.com
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@gmail @philemon_de_dev Yup, getting better at your art is like a guaranteed technique for improvement.
1. Read "Write Simply" by Paul Graham!
2. Check out the amazon internal template email leaked
3. Write often
4. Use AI editing tools like copy ai or conversion ai
*that's what made a big difference for me :)
I'm late to the party here, but still thought I'd chime in with a few thoughts:
I'm a professional writer by trade. I started out as a freelance journalist in my early 20s before being hired as a content marketing manager for a major music and film magazine.
From there, I transitioned into content marketing, creating sponsored content for a variety of companies—including 20th Century Fox and other film studios—before landing a gig as a content marketing specialist in the tech industry. I now write and provide consultations for tech startups looking to scale their content marketing efforts.
Despite my current pedigree, I didn't write much in my youth and had no predilection towards it—I actually studied fine art in high school! But in my late teens, I started using MSN to chat with friends after school while doing homework, and I discovered something—I was actually able to communicate more clearly with people over chat instead of in-person, and began to develop a conversational tone of voice.
From there, I went to university to study creative writing and English literature, but I didn't become a full-fledged writer until I started freelancing for my school paper. An interesting thing happened at that point: all of a sudden, I started getting better marks on all my assignments.
Despite studying English at an academic level for three years, I was, for the most part, a pretty mediocre writer. Basically, I barely wrote—even for fun. Everything changed once I began writing every week.
Although I rarely had any interaction with my editors at the school paper (unlike what you see in TV shows, we weren't sitting at a desk going over my writing, line-by-line), the simple act of writing frequently and setting a deadline allowed me to level up my writing skills, and fast. And it spilled over into other areas of my life.
I've seen it written in the comments here, and it's completely true: to get better at writing, you need to write a lot. And while there are tricks and tips you can follow to make yourself a better writer, especially when it comes to SEO, content marketing, and product marketing, the best thing you can do for yourself is to set a deadline (even if it's artificial) and stick to it.
Write every day. Write every week. Write once a month. Whatever your time allows, really.
But not only write, but also read. Read articles in magazines. Read your favourite authors. And when doing so, underline the parts that stand out or stir something inside of you. Really think about why they're effective, and then try to inject a similar flavor into your own writing.
Watch the Netflix series 'Maid' (seriously, it has some great wisdom on the writing process in it).
Create a swipe file of your favourite words or phrases (you can easily find out how to do so online) and use them as inspiration when writing.
Steal from the greats. Stephen King has a great book on writing called, you guessed it, 'On Writing.' But don't get too bogged down by guides—if you do, you'll just end up writing with the same techniques as everyone else.
Write in a journal. Create an account in Medium and try your hand at self-publishing. Or reach out to other publications for guest posting opportunities or freelance work.
Write for yourself. Think for yourself. And whatever you do, just keep writing and never stop.
At first, it may be terrible. But at a certain point, it'll get better.
One day, it could be great.
Grammerly has been a good help. Not only with spelling, but punctuation, sentence structure as well.
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@florence_walker Agreed, Grammerly is a great tool to learn, evaluate and improve writing in the long run. Since you mentioned Grammerly, I'm curious to know are there any other tools that you use to make your writing better?
@florence_walker I was quite sceptical about Grammarly at first. It actually really does help, even the free version is super useful for writing content. I did not notice how many mistakes I have in the text until I installed it.
Second Brain for Engineering Managers
Non-native English speaker here. I have been writing in English for the past two decades so I’m not too bad at it now.
Anyway, here is a tip for non-native English speakers like myself. For me personally, the most important thing in writing effectively is the structure. And to get over the fear of wrong grammar and spelling.
To write more, you need to read more. Having more vocab is good but it’s not the solution to being able to write better. So don’t stress too much about not knowing many vocabularies. Many great articles and books are written in very simple English.
Feel free to check out my writing on Medium or Twitter. My username is @eisabai.
These days, I aim to write, or rather, produce, some form of written output every single day. It could be a tweet, LinkedIn post, Quora answer, or comment on Product Hunt, like this one.
And once a fortnight, I write a full article for my blog and medium.
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1. Read Articles
2. Have an app for new word a day
3. See videos for new ideas in content writing
4. Search for new tools
5. Practice
6. Listen to what people , you can get ideas
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@jaskiran_kaur Great list! I think I did a good job with point no.6. I have been getting a lot of ideas from people after posting this question on PH. Thanks for commenting, Jaskiran.
Product Hunt
I liked Paul Graham's piece on writing simply: http://paulgraham.com/simply.html
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@sarah_wright7 Hey Sarah, this is gold! Thanks for sharing, I have bookmarked this page because I might need to keep looking at it periodically to keep reminding myself.
Product Hunt
I've been surprised by how great Yoast SEO is. It tells me when I'm using passive voice or when I need to shorten sentences. I agree on the Grammarly advice, but Yoast has been helpful picking up broader readability issues that Grammarly hasn't caught. https://yoast.com/seo-blog/
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@hardlyallison Yoast SEO is a life-saver. There were a few instances where my writing was passable by Grammarly, but Yoast SEO red flagged readability issues. Thanks for commenting, Allison.
Read the work writers that you admire - study the details of their paragraph structure, their expression, style, sentence structure and so on. Also grab a copy of Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
@aaron_tran2 Seconded! Every writer should know Strunk’s message:
“Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.“
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@aaron_tran2 Thanks for sharing your advice and the book recommendation, Aaron. I hope everyone who crosses this comment, find this useful. :)
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@aaron_tran2 @kbn_au Thanks Kyle. This is a wonderful message; worthy of taking a print and sticking it to my workstation.
Mental Models
1. Try to break up any sentence with over 10 words.
2. Don't communicate more than a single idea in each sentence
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@killshiva True, adding too many words and ideas makes the reader ambiguous, and it deviates them from the central theme of the story.
If the thing you write is something kinda long -like book or diary or article-, logic is the most important thing. So every end of the week read what you write carefully and pretend like a reader of your work. You can determine somethings simply doesnt make sense every new week.
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@caner_altundas Totally agree with you, Caner. This happens to me a lot; once you give some time for the thoughts to settle down and alienate yourself from the project that you're working on, sometimes, you can stumble on a new idea or inspiration that you had earlier not thought about.