Perfecting Your Writing Style for Clarity

Writing
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Your writing style is unique and how you choose to express yourself in writing will make all of the difference in the world as far as how clearly you come across. If you choose to use a particular sentence, it may be crystal clear and your intended meaning may be spot on. On the other hand, if you choose to use different words, the entire concept of what you were trying to say may be lost.

Your word choice and tone mean everything

You may find (in fact, it is pretty much a certainty) that your writing style changes over time. If you look back on what you wrote several years ago, the tone and style of that writing will be completely different than what you are writing now. Hopefully, what you are writing now is a big improvement over what you wrote in the past (in many different ways).

There are many different ideas swirling around in your head and you just need to choose to express those ideas in the clearest and most effective way for your particular target audience and for your particular brand. Using the perfect style for your situation is not difficult. It just takes some thinking and some effort on your part. You will definitely want to make sure that your writing is substantive. A lack of content (or ideas that drive that content) will not bode well with your target audience and, basically, it will be ineffective and will fail to get you to where you are going (or want to go).

Give it some pizzazz

Because you have so many possible ways of expressing yourself, it may be a little challenging to come up with the perfect way. However, with a little bit of effort and some interaction between your target audience and you, you will soon understand which way to express yourself for maximum impact and the most positive results.

The more you write, the more easily you will understand which words work for you and which ones do not. You will always want to keep in mind that no matter how you express yourself, the writing itself should be compelling and interesting. It is also a good idea to inject some humor, where appropriate.

Your readers will definitely appreciate that and it will motivate them to keep coming back and wanting to read more and more. As you look back at what you have written, you will start to identify the words that work well and those that don’t work at all. This is a very important skill for you to have and the more you use it, the more efficient you will become in the writing process.

Identifying the unnecessary words from the beginning

There are some words and phrases that you will be able to identify as unnecessary right away. Some of those are: Really, truly, in order to, a lot, a little, actually, and just. When you come upon those words (or others like those words), look closely at the sentence and figure out how to rewrite it without them. It is easier than you think.

Another thing that you should look at is redundancies. It is a common mistake to use two words together that mean the same thing. Those are not always obvious but if you look at those pairs, you will soon figure out that one can be eliminated and that will help you to tighten up your writing. Another thing that you will want to avoid is using expressions or words that everyone else uses. After all, you want your writing to be compelling and that means that you need to express yourself in a fresh way. If you do that, people will pay attention to what you are saying and they will want to read more and more.

Pay attention to grammar, punctuation, etc.

If your content is well-written and you don’t use any unnecessary words, other people will notice. In fact, they will notice that just as much as if your content is poorly written. Just make sure that you express yourself through your writing in the best way possible. The thing about grammatical errors is that they are highly distracting for the reader. They are so distracting that the person reading your content may not be able to concentrate on what you are trying to say once they stumble upon an error. That is detrimental to your and to your brand. Once you have finished writing, either review it carefully so that you can identify errors or have someone else do it for you. Either way, it is a necessary part of the process.

Conclusion

Your writing style should be clear every time and it should touch your readers in a way that causes them to want to interact with you.  Take the time to get to know and understand your target audience, which will go a long way to helping you to clarify your writing. Always remember to edit what you have written carefully so that the final draft is perfect (or as close to perfect as possible, in any case). You want your readers to come back for more and more content and more and more exciting ideas that they can use in their businesses.

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Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.