How To Write

The Great Explicator now reveals how to write better.

Write About What's Important To You

I was a bad writer until my 20s. English was probably my least favorite subject in school. Only when I found something to say did I begin to study grammar and writing and try to improve my handwriting. I wanted to be able to express myself well to explain my views, because if I present an idea poorly, I can't expect it to be received. So do what I did and find some things that are important to you and write something about them daily. Practice makes perfect, as they say.

Spelling

I feel like the best way to be better at spelling is to read more. I generally don't memorize how to spell every word. I just notice if a word doesn't look like it's spelled right. And how would I notice if I hadn't seen the word quite a bit? Of course, when you read social media posts, you're often reading other people's bad spelling and grammar, so that doesn't count as reading that would be useful for improving your spelling.

If you don't know how to spell a word, look it up. Eventually you'll get tired of looking it up, and you'll find a way to remember.

Style Guide

You should find a good style guide. I found one at the beginning of a huge World Book dictionary from the 1970s about 25 years ago, and it helped to get me thinking about writing better. In my mind, a style guide is really more about writing correctly than style, though what's correct can vary by dialect or style, I suppose.

Goo

I usually begin writing about any subject by writing a mess of disjointed words, phrases, and sentences that I know I want to include, which I call "goo". These are like my talking points. I put them on different lines with a few lines of whitespace between to keep them seperated and clearly visible. Then I just fill in the details and segues and rearrange things as needed, and voila, a great article appears. How difficult is that? Writing isn't difficult when you get the hang of it. And if I want to write a book, I can just write a bunch of articles like that.

Jump Around

I use techniques learned from programming to write better. When I'm coding, I rarely type everything in the order that it appears in the finished product. I code whatever I know I need right now, and whenever I realize I need something else somewhere, I add it. The order that I type it in doesn't matter. The same is true for writing. It doesn't matter what order we write in, so why not write what you know now, and fill in the rest as you figure out what you need or you find what works?

Proofread

Some folks seem to fail to proofread at all. Maybe time is more important to them than being correct, at least in some scenarios. I probably proofread too much, and it takes a lot of time, because I'm always editing and refining and inserting things, I have to check that it all makes sense and isn't repetitive and doesn't contain typos. And I proofread to try to figure out what I can do to further improve the text. Yet I mostly wrote this in 30 minutes, though I might be refining it and appending to it for months or years.

Sometimes I'll wait a day or two before publishing something so I can proofread with a fresh mind. It's almost as good as getting someone else to proofread for me, because on a different day, I'm almost like a different person and might have different thoughts and ideas. And by then, I've forgotten some of what I wrote, so it's not as familiar and I can't just skim over it, so I catch more mistakes.

Be Clear

Don't be vague or ambiguous unless it's intended. Usually, when communicating with people, you're trying to actually communicate something and not create confusion or uncertainty, so when proofreading, always think about how someone might misinterpret or misunderstand what you're saying. How can you be more clear?

Be Concise

Some people think using big words and being incomprehensible makes them seem more intelligent. But if you're trying to communicate something, it's better to be concise and easily understandable. Challenge yourself to find the most concise way possible to say what you're trying to say.

Write How You Talk

I think Americans expect writing to be a bit more formal than people in the UK and other places, but it's usually best to write how you talk. "Affectation" is a term for behavior, speech, or writing that is artificial and designed to impress. I'd try to avoid that sort of thing.