Punctuation and writing skills.

BTW:

Bravo for recognizing the importance, and wanting to improve!

I always had issues meeting a required minimum length. I never understood how to write pages on end.

Now this conversation has made me edit this sentence twice. It makes me self-conscious about my grammar and spelling.

Toyman01 wrote: I'll just have to work at it. It's easy to bang out a bunch of words and skip the punctuation all together. I'm trying to break that habit.

The greatest advice I can offer is this: PROOFREAD.

Bang it out to get the ideas down, then go back and re-read the passage several times. Where you would pause for a deep breath in speaking, consider adding a sentence break. If you have two related but short sentences, consider joining them with a semicolon.

Check the flow as well. I'll go back several times and see if I can say the same thing in fewer words, cutting out all the excess that doesn't make the point. Instead of saying that last sentence, I could pare it back to the essentials: "I revisit my writing to remove wordiness". Sometimes that's a little formal or dry, so as others have mentioned, knowing the target is important.

Also, look at each finished paragraph. If you are using the same word(s) numerous times, look for synonyms or different sentence structures that reduce repetition.

Last but not least, write in the active voice more than the passive voice. That also makes your writing sound more direct and reduces wordiness.

oldtin wrote: Like most things, to write well, takes practice and focus.

+1.

I went to school for journalism so I was constantly writing and having my work critiqued. The latter is the important part. While you can write reasonably well by following various formatting theories, you really need to have your work evaluated and graded to make measurable improvement.

To be honest, the most important thing is to watch spelling and basic word usage: "it's" and "its", "they're/their/there" and that sort of thing.

Unfortunately for me, 17 years in the engineering field and writing truncated notes for AE drawings and specifications has done nothing good for my writing.

One journalism trait I do use often in my engineering writing (or when reviewing sheet notes others have written) is the heavy use of paragraphs compared to more conventional "novel style" writing. I believe this is good for forum posts as well, to avoid the reader seeing large blocks of text.

Writing is subjective as well. After reading your paragraph and then Joey's edited version, I agree with what he changed although my first pass would been slightly different.

I have to admit, one thing I really dislike about this forum software compared to some other's is the lack of a proper "preview" function that allows you to see exactly how the post will look before you've actually posted it. The little preview window to the right of the typing field doesn't work very well for this.

I'll often go back and edit posts after reading it and/or seeing additional posts and information. Plus, for some reason I'll see dyslexic spelling mistakes in the actual post and not while typing no matter how many times I proof-read it.

(I've editted this post twice now... correction: three times... )

One book that I was assigned as a freshman in high school, and have reread every few years since, is Patricia C O'Conner's "Woe is I." It is both very useful and easy to read.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's guide to better English in plain English http://amzn.com/0965423352

Duke wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: I'll just have to work at it. It's easy to bang out a bunch of words and skip the punctuation all together. I'm trying to break that habit.

The greatest advice I can offer is this: PROOFREAD. Bang it out to get the ideas down, then go back and re-read the passage several times. Where you would pause for a deep breath in speaking, consider adding a sentence break. If you have two related but short sentences, consider joining them with a semicolon. Check the flow as well. I'll go back several times and see if I can say the same thing in fewer words, cutting out all the excess that doesn't make the point. Instead of saying that last sentence, I could pare it back to the essentials: "I revisit my writing to remove wordiness". Sometimes that's a little formal or dry, so as others have mentioned, knowing the target is important. Also, look at each finished paragraph. If you are using the same word(s) numerous times, look for synonyms or different sentence structures that reduce repetition. Last but not least, write in the active voice more than the passive voice. That also makes your writing sound more direct and reduces wordiness.

I do this, then typically re-read the post again once it's "gone live."

When I was in college, I would finish a paper 3-5 days before it was due, then go back and proofread for a second time, edit, and see if I needed to add anything to fully flesh out the idea.

Part of my problem is I proofread it and don't like it. So I change it, proofread again and change something else. Do that a couple or four times and it's so disjointed, I delete it and start over, or just don't post.

A little ADD goes a long way.

In reply to Toyman01:

I've done that as well, especially since I'm prone to writing novels when posting. I've started writing something, then get distracted (what? You want me to actually work???), come back to it an hour or so later, hate all of it and just hit the 'back' button.