Write Better Sentences

Are you a blogger?

Have you committed these common mistakes when writing sentences?

Here’s the thing. Most of the time, bloggers (newbie or pro) are known to repeat the same writing mistake without knowing it themselves.

Does that make you a terrible writer? Of course not! It just means you have to be more aware of your writing.

In this article, I’m going to share with you the common mistakes that appear in sentences and what you can do to improve them.

Also, I’m going to show you the popular editing tools that will definitely help improve your writing.

Common mistakes in writing

The first step to write better sentences is to understand the mistakes. We have to be aware of the mistakes in order to improve them.

Mistake #1 – Wrong word choice

Some bloggers have the tendency to use the wrong words or “big” words in their writing. Why? Because they think it will impress the readers.

But this is not the case.

Some words might be too “big” for our readers and it won’t add any impact to the writing.

Plus, using “big” words can confuse or distract the readers.

The primary goal of writing is to deliver a clear message to our readers.

Use a set of vocabulary that fits your voice and your audience. In fact, using simple and easy words will make the writing easy to understand. Which really is the whole point.

Mistake #2 – Lack of flow

A good piece of writing is a piece that flows naturally. It’s how we connect from sentence to sentence, from idea to idea.

Some of the causes that disrupt the flow of sentence are:

No variation in the vocabulary

For example:

Before: The boy went to the store. The boy bought some candy.

After: The boy went to the store. He bought some candy.

By replacing The boy with He, the sentence flows better and becomes easier to read.

No coordinating conjunctions

Conjunctions are – and, but, for, nor, or, so, but and yet.

Don’t be afraid to use them!

Sometimes, we are encouraged to start a sentence with And or But. These words can help to improve the flow of our sentences.

When you write with flow, you are able to deliver the idea better to readers.

Mistake #3 – Bored writing

Bored writing happens when the bloggers don’t have a firm grasp on the topic they are writing. We can’t write something good when we don’t understand the topic ourselves.

Our writing becomes boring when the writing doesn’t have a personality or an angle to it.

We have to know what we are writing and have a stand on it.

It’s not hard to notice that a lot of the content looks the same on the Internet. That’s unavoidable and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But, it just looks a little bit boring.

In order to avoid being stuck with “bored writing”, you need to:

Pick a side

To attract readers, you have to pick a side. And, tell your readers what you believe in.

Write with personality

Your writing should have “you” in it. Don’t afraid to show your personality. Because, this is who you are.

Tips to tighten our writing

Here are some tips that you can use to make your sentence clearer and more concise

Tip #1 – Avoiding adverbs

What are adverbs?

Adverbs are sentence modifiers. It can be an adjective or a verb.

Example:

Before: Rose is a very grumpy person

After: Rose is a grouch.

When we replace very grumpy person with grouch, the sentence became easier to read. Making it easier for our readers too.

So, try to avoid adverbs in your writing to make it easy to read.

Tip #2 – Being clear

Writing in clear and concise sentences will take your writing to the next level.

Clarity

Clarity is important when it comes to writing.

If you can’t explain the topic to a child, then you probably don’t know the topic well enough and need to do more research.

It’s important to make your writing easy to digest. Remove what’s not important and keep the important elements in your message.

Create an outline

After you have done enough research, create an outline for your message.

The core message will deliver better if you have an outline.

Take this post for example. I drafted out the points that I want to deliver before actually writing the article. This makes my message clearer to the readers and keeps me focused on the topic.

Call to action

The last part is to determine the call to action.

Put a call to action in your writing, let the readers know what you want them to do.

Whether it’s meant to inspire them, sell them something or entertain them, readers need to know what action to take with it.

Editing tools that help

When we are writing, we shouldn’t get interrupted by mistakes. We shouldn’t try to fix every sentence while writing as it tends to interrupt our idea flow.

Let simple mistakes happen and fix after you’ve completed the draft.

Unless you have an editor to help you, most of the time, you’ll need editing tools to do the lifting.

Here are 3 useful tools that can help you to do self-editing. In fact, I’m using some of them as well:

Slickwrite

Slickwrite helps improve your work by giving critiques.

Abstracts words, repeat words, excessive usage of adverbs and other mistakes are all picked up. The mistakes will be highlighted in different color code to make editing a lot easier.

Grammarly

A popular grammar checker among bloggers and writers.

Grammarly will proofread the article for common grammar and spelling mistakes as well as typos. Unlike other tools, Grammarly allows us to edit our work with the help of a plugin.

Hemingwayapp

Hemingwayapp is more than just a simple grammar or spell checker. It’s also capable of making our writing bolder and clearer with shorter sentences.

This tool will highlight lengthy and complex sentences in yellow or red. Then, you need to edit to make it easy to read.

Over to you

Now, it’s your turn to put these tips into action.

I know it seems hard and impossible to remember all these points when we are writing but you want to improve, then you have to put it to practice.

Read and write more (with a purpose) and I’m sure your writing will improve along the way.