Grammar. It’s a little bit like math – something you either love or hate when you learn about it in school, but also something you use every single day of your adult life. Communication is a powerful tool in today’s modern world; from writing essays for a college class, crafting professional emails to colleagues and bosses, and the ever-intimidating process of writing about yourself for a cover letter or job application. As a self-identified grammar nerd and syntax extraordinaire, I hope, with these tips, to make your relationship with grammar and writing a little bit better!
- Be careful of writing like you speak
One of the most common mistakes that occurs in writing is crafting written sentences in the same style and format as spoken ones. If a friend asks you whether you’d like to go to the beach, you might respond with something like “Yeah but I gotta finish my homework real quick,” which is perfectly acceptable for speaking out loud or for writing dialogue – but in the context of a creative story, you might go for something like: She agreed to the fun outing with her friend, but begrudgingly promised to finish her homework before they left.
- Vary your sentence lengths
The easiest way to add a little pizzazz to your writing is to play around with sentence length. Too many short sentences or too many long sentences in a row can make your writing predictable and less fun than you probably intended. With long sentences, be careful of run-ons – dashes and semicolons are your best friend!
- Synonyms are your friend, but not your benefactress
Looking up synonyms is a great way to enhance your writing, especially if you are trying to update and improve your voice. However – be wary of using words that you don’t really know the definition of; a word can seem like a suitable alternative but can mean something completely different in the context of where you placed it.
- Fragments and run-ons
When following the advice of tip #2, it is easy to accidentally write sentence fragments and run-on sentences. As much as we all hated learning those basic grammar rules in the second grade, that’s essentially what it comes down to – at the very least, your sentence needs a subject and a verb. Often, it is easy to recognize when a sentence is grammatically incorrect by simply reading it out loud; your instincts will more than likely tell you that something doesn’t sound right, in which case you should have an easier time identifying your mistake.