There are three basic elements to obtaining and maintaining the attention of your reader: interesting, and better yet, fascinating topics; good grammar; and good spelling. Just because an article or book has these three elements does not necessarily mean the piece will grab the attention of the reader or even be a comprehensible piece of writing. Therefore several other writing tips and tools can create writing excellence.
A writer should bookmark a good online dictionary and thesaurus. While Microsoft Word has a good spell check and grammar check program, it is still necessary when striving for excellence in writing, to also use a dictionary and thesaurus. Through using a thesaurus, you may find that you often use a word that is close to what you mean, but there is another word that better states your thoughts.
Writers often have difficulty with passive voice, meaning, they use passive voice instead of active voice. In corporate America and in technical writing, passive voice is used and acceptable. To ensure you use active voice, look at your sentence structure and make sure it looks like this: subject-verb-object. For example, "Sarah looked at him." This sentence structure follows the model of subject-verb-object. For writers schooled in reporting, journalism and technical writing, it can be difficult to get out of the bad habit of writing in the passive voice. Active voice is an important tool toward reaching writing excellence.
After you write a piece, use the "Find" function to look for all the "ly"s and "ing"s in your piece. Most "ly" words are unnecessary adverbs. For example, "She lovingly looked at him." In this sentence, "lovingly" is an adverb. Also, "ing" can indicate passive voice. For example, "I was looking at him through the window." This sentence is written in the passive voice and using "Find," you would find this. This sentence could be changed to active voice by rewriting it like this: "I looked at him through the window." Changing from passive to active voice will often shorten the word count, as well.
Never have more than three items in the list. For example: "I love my dogs: Tyler, Stella and Max." Also be aware of when you need to use a colon, semi-colon and when a comma is sufficient.
The semi-colon is used when the words "however", "therefore", and "moreover" may also be used. For example, "My dog was so sick he couldn't sleep; we took him to the vet immediately.
A colon is used before a list. For example, "I love my dogs: Tyler, Stella and Max."
A coma is used when separating thoughts in a sentence. For example, "The sun in shining, the air is crisp, and I don't have a care in the world."
Cover one thought per paragraph.