Respect your reader

Never, ever talk down to your reader. Always remember that you might not be the cleverest person in the world and your work might be read by somebody with a higher IQ and better education than you. A little humility can go a long way to helping you treat your reader as your equal. Your college degree does not elevate you above a manual worker. Mr. greasy overalls might need to read your book to find out how to correctly write a letter but he would be able to tell you a thing or two about tuning your car engine to perfection.

If you forget to maintain respect for your reader, it will be obvious and you will not last long as a writer; there are many authors as good or better than you ready and able to take your place. Would you choose to read the work of someone who clearly thinks you are a dummy compared with him? No, of course not. Always bear in mind when writing that knowledge or aptitude does not make you any better than anyone else, just different.

What’s your favourite word?

It doesn’t matter what your favourite word might be: whatever it is, just make sure you don’t overuse it. When you come across a brilliant new word, remember it is only new to you; your readers will not want to see this word repeated on every other line. I would go so far as to say that, if you have a favourite word, you should consciously censor it from every document you write. Does this sound harsh? Maybe but pet words have a way of creeping in, multiplying and overrunning your work.

Although it is good to vary your vocabulary, you should not get carried away with it. It is good to know a lot of words, of course it is but you should never be tempted to use words for the sake of showing off, that is just asking the reader to shoot you down.) Use words which are appropriate in the context of your work and write as simply as possible: write to inform or to entertain, never set out just to impress.

Be Yourself

As part of your own style, you will naturally develop different ways of writing for different circumstances. You will automatically adjust your writing to suit the situation: you do not have to remind yourself that you should not use the same tone in a sympathy letter as you would use to write a review of a film or an article about a football match. The keyword here is “naturally”: you are not faking anything in adopting an appropriate tone. It is a similar thing to the way you would automatically speak softly in a church but feel comfortable shouting at a sporting event.

This change of tone will become as automatic as selecting a crisp sheet of notepaper for a business letter when you will happily scribble a shopping list on any old scrap of paper. Adapting your style for different circumstances, is not the same thing as imposing an artificial tone on your work in order to impress the reader. Practice writing as you would speak under different sets of circumstances and you will have a better understanding of how this works.

Keep It Simple

Write in simple sentences and avoid the unnecessary use of long words. The use of simple, correct language is a courtesy towards your reader. There is no need for convoluted sentences or florid language. The simpler you make your writing, the better it will be received. This is particularly important if you are writing for the internet. The internet moves at a fast pace, people want information delivered in easy to read format, they don’t want to have to work to decipher your meaning.

When writing for the internet, you should also keep your paragraphs shorter than normal. Information delivered in small chunks separated by white space is more appealing on a computer screen than large blocks of dense text. Anyone confronted by a whole screen full of unbroken text is likely to click away and read something which is easier on the eye.