Good writing = good prospects

Good writing is determined by certain basic rules that holds true whatever be the writing genre—creative, personal, or business. The following seven rules will help you to refine your communication skills and increase your writing power.

1.       Create an outline

Before beginning to write, it is a good rule of thumb to map out what you want to say, so that you arrive at your goal. A sound general formula for written documents comprises an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The introduction presents your thesis or raises questions or concerns you plan to answer in your document. The body is made up of your supporting material and develops the thesis. The conclusion ties all your information together and reaffirms the original thesis. The key is to travel from opening direction to closure.

2.       Establish a thesis

A thesis is a statement of purpose, intent, or central idea in a piece of writing. Unless you are writing a suspense novel, your reader should never have to guess the point of your document.

The thesis should be stated clearly in the beginning of your document and the remainder of the document should illustrate and support it. Once you have determined your thesis and have started writing the rest of your document, it is a good idea to return frequently to the question whether the document continues to support the thesis.

3.       Provide direction with paragraphs

The next major step in developing your writing is to organize your ideas. If the thesis is the engine of your document, paragraphs serve as the road map; their primary function is to organize your illustrative points into manageable groups.

Each paragraph should function as a unit and should say something worthwhile. Each sentence in a paragraph should illustrate both the thesis of the document and the topic sentence of that paragraph.

4.       Know your audience

Even before you decide on your thesis statement, you need to identify your audience.

Ask yourself “What are the backgrounds, needs and interests of my audience?”  The audience should always determine the style and the tone you will use in your writing. You risk alienating readers and undermining the effectiveness of your writing if you use a style that is inappropriate for a particular audience.

5.       Maintain your tense

Literary exceptions aside, you should try to maintain the same tense throughout your writing. If you begin in the past tense, you should attempt to carry that tense throughout your document. Shifting from one tense to another makes the document unclear, shows uncertainty on the part of the author, and fail to engage the reader. This holds particularly true if you are summarizing a meeting or a report.

6.       Beware of the thesaurus syndrome

It is important for your document to be engaging, and one way of doing that is by using a rich vocabulary. Nevertheless, it is not advisable to use unfamiliar language. When you are unfamiliar with all the subtleties of a particular word, the chances of using it incorrectly are great and mistakes could be obvious to the reader. You should strive to use a variety of different words, but not at the expense of a natural, readable tone.

7.       Keep it concise

The most effective writing provides a maximum amount of information, in a minimum amount of words. This does not mean that every sentence and paragraph needs to be short; rather the goal is to write in such a way that every word, sentence, and paragraph counts. Assume that your reader’s time is valuable and that you want to give them as much information as quickly as possible. Take care to delete unnecessary phrases such as ‘the fact that’ or ‘the reason why is’.