How To Write Clearly
How To Write Clearly
How To Write Clearly
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while writing them. To write is to learn. The final stage is to make sure that your thoughts
emerge in language that your reader will understand.
Two simple steps can help you to revise your drafts more effectively.
• Type or word process your work
It helps if you can see what you write in cold type. What do you think looks fine in
handwriting can look quite different in typeface. You can then see what you need to
change.
• Read your work aloud
Read it as if you were someone else looking at it. Ask a friend to read it. Note any
awkward or unclear sentences and rewrite them.
Language in the essays
Please notice that this does not mean studying grammar or learning rules. Trying to learn
rules often only increases confusion. What you need is common sense. Most mistakes are
the result of lack of care or lack of willingness or failure to allow enough time for drafting.
The best way to learn to write is to write; like any other skills you learn it by doing it.
You also learn from comments on your performance, especially those made by your tutor.
You gradually build up a realistic idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are, and
of how you can improve.
As well as writing try to read widely. Think about the ways in which other writers use
words. Curiosity about words is a characteristic shown by most writers. Therefore, having
a general interest in language will lead, in time, to greater confidence in using it.
Punctuation
English is governed by customs or conventions rather than rules. Punctuation is one of
the conventions of expression and it often worries students. It helps, first, to get the
punctuation into perspective. Think of it as a way of making your reader’s task easier.
When we speak we punctuate quite naturally. Marks like the full stop and the comma
have been devised to show pause and emphasis in the written language.
The full stop and comma are crucial. The full stop is the most important of all. It separates
one sentence or unit of thought form another. If you think of a full stop as marking off a
whole unit, then a comma marks off one part of that unit from another part. Exclamation
marks and question marks, both of which are rarely need in essays, have exactly the same
function as full stops.
The semi-colon is less important but can be very useful. It is more emphatic than a comma
but less so than a full stop. The colon normally says, stop, a list is coming, the dash can
be messy and a comma will usually serve instead. Brackets are used for asides but, again,
you should not need to use them often and their task can be generally be done by commas.
Summing up, what you should learn about punctuation is the following:
• Full stops and commas are vital.
• Semicolons are useful if you can master them.
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• Full stops mark off sentences.
• Commas mark off fragments of sentences.
How can you punctuate better?
The following is suggested:
• Examine the punctuation in the books you read. Start by looking at the punctuation
marks in books and work out why they have used those marks and not others.
• Read your work carefully. Read it aloud, slowly, sentence by sentence. Ask yourself
‘Where are pauses? How long do I want my reader to pause here?’
• Build up an awareness of your strengths and weaknesses in punctuation. Classify your
errors, e.g.:
Not recognising a sentence (full stop);
Not marking off fragments of a sentence (comma);
Not using or misusing semicolons.
Improving your style
Style is a very large and much debated subject. What is good style? What is bad style?
One intriguing definition is that good style is invisible, while bad style keeps getting in
the way. Style is also a personal matter: in as much as it reflects the writer’s own ideas
and patterns of thought, it can not in fact be taught. But here are some general guidelines
to help you improve your own writing style.
• Say one thing at a time; one idea, one sentence is a useful reminder.
• Avoid long rambling sentences.
• Avoid the pompous, the roundabout, the wordy and colloquial.
• Use the active, not the passive (e.g. they thought rather than it was ….)
was…).
• Use the positive rather than the negative.
Having looked at some procedures and conventions of good writing, in the next lesson
we will talk about the presentation of essays.