10 Ways to Improve Your Writing

Today's post is by Derek Haines:

As social networking is predominately text driven, it really is a good idea to make sure your writing is up to an acceptable and readable standard. There’s nothing worse than reading a tweet, Google+ or Facebook entry or blog post that is full of errors. It really gives an impression to the reader that you are a either careless, or worse, a bit of a dope. So to help you make a better impression on the few million people that may be reading you, (yes, daunting isn’t it?) here are a few tips you might want to consider.

1. Always check that your verb agree with the subject. I hates this mistake with a a passion.

2. Almost every comptupter has a speelchekker, so use it. Yoo could even use teh auto-tect correction for commun errors.

3. Typos involving small common words like that and than, it  and is and there and their are easy to make. Check before you hit the send button. Better to be safe that sorry.

4. One mistake that irks me is the incorrect use of capitalisation. I just cringe when i see this error.

4. When you use numbered bullets, make sure they are correctly sequential.

6. Check your formatting in blog posts as errors are not always obvious.

7. USE OF SHOUTING CAPITALS WILL OFFEND READERS, SO DON’T USE THEM. Except for unavoidable acronyms. LOL

8. There are some who think; oddly enough, that punctuation – commas, colons and em dashes, are a sign: or symbolic, of high intellect. In fact the opposite is true and you stand a good chance of looking like a real fool.

9. I dislike sentences that always start with I. I hate it in fact. I stop reading instantly. I would advise against it. I would.

10. Reading long passages of text on the Internet; whether it be on a computer, laptop or mobile phone is very tiring on a reader’s eyes so you should be careful not to ramble on with long sentences and un-paragraphed passages of text that are neither informative nor interesting as you will lose your reader very quickly as they will become bored and stop reading your diatribe quicker than you can say Jack Robinson, so don’t just keep typing ad infinitum about your pet subject in long and badly punctuated sentences that keep waffling on without ever coming to the point that was probably your intention to begin with but you forgot about once you got started and decided to add one extra point in your sentence that should have included a relative pronoun but you got lazy and just used a random comma and kept on typing. Phew!

11. Be sure that your title is relevant and an accurate summary of your article.