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Improving Your Writing Skills


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This site has a large list of tips to improve your English writing skills, just check it out:

http://www.skidmore.edu/~rscarce/WritingTips.htm

WRITING TIPS

Advice, Hints, and Teensy Pearls of Wisdom for Weary and Wary Writers

By Rik Scarce

You Can Improve Your Writing

Students often tell me they feel a range of emotions about their writing.  Some approach written assignments with excitement and curiosity, while others feel nothing short of anxiety and even outright fear.  Having experienced many of those same sensations, I can sympathize with just about everyone.

The way I see it, though, everyone can improve their writing, including me. I continue to learn from good writers, editors, and proofreaders.  You can, too.  The rewards of improving your writing are substantial.  Writing well is an enjoyable pastime and a valued skill.  If you take the time to improve your writing, you will find yourself more self-confident about the ways you express your ideas, and you will find that others appreciate your writing as well.

I hope "Writing Tips" will help your writing in several ways. First, I have found that most students are unaware of some of the easy steps they can follow to improve their writing. These ideas have little to do with spelling and grammar, and you will find them in the "General Tips" section. Second, from year to year students tend to make the same sorts of writing mistakes, such as using incorrect words, misspelling common words, and certain grammatical and punctuation mistakes; I note some of the errors that crop up most often in the "Mechanical Breakdowns" section. Next, I discuss titling papers, quoting and paraphrasing others' works, and citing and referencing those sources.  I also spend some time discussing and the plague of plagiarism--you'll be amazed at who's stealing whose words--along with "good" and "bad" internet sources.  And I conclude with a word about creativity.

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  • 1 month later...

I do not really have any sites that I can share that will be good resources to improve your writing skills, however I can make a suggestion.

Look up different writing prompts and either use your computer or get a notebook and do some free writing on a prompt every day. The more that you practice your skills, the more that you will find that they are improving.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Having people proofread your work usually costs money. I made another thread about joining content mills as a way to get free, professional critique of your work but you usually need a decent level of ability to be accepted in the first place. Textbroker used to be excellent for it but there's not as much work now, especially for more obscure languages.

Somewhere that provides free feedback on written work would be very useful indeed, if anyone knows of such a site.

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Writing is an art, which can only be improved by means of thorough practice. If you want to improve upon your writing skills, I would recommend you to start writing more articles and letters. And I would also advise you to beef up on your vocabulary, so that you can make your writings more ornate.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for the link, I'm actually in a dire need to improve my writing and speech, hehe! But it's easier to say than to do!  This article has some really interesting tips, that might seem too obvious to some, but most of us (specially me) tend to skip them.  Like for example reading before I start writing an assignment, lately I lost my focus and get bored so easily that attempting to read and research something doesn't seem doable. 

I have a problem, I know!  I have ADD so is really hard to concentrate on anything, as a kid they thought it was bad, but now as an adult is far worse, hehe! 

Anyways, going back to topic!  Writing is a skill that can only be improved with practice, but every time you practice you must put all your effort in it. Because is actually pointless to practice and practice if you are not even trying to do your best and improve.

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