Today I ran across another post that can help me improve my writing. Mistakes That Make You Look Bad was on the WritingThoughts site and I think it is going to be a valuable addition to what I do here. You, too, might want to consider using the tips in your writing.
This is what I do on Sundays–spend time looking at what other writers are doing or have done. This is the first time I’ve seen WritingThoughts and I was impressed. Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 19 years of professional business writing experience. I think we can all learn from her solid experience.
Mistakes That Make You Look Bad discusses twenty common grammar errors that are easily fixable. I won’t mention all 20 (some are spelling errors, including misspelling your own name!), but I will include these:
Misplacing a decibel (which project would you rather take–the job paying $10.00 or the one paying $1000?)
Using a double negative. Not only unnecessary, they actually make your writing unclear.
Run-on sentences. She says that connecting a bunch of independent sentences with the word “and” stringing them into one long sentence is wrong. It is.
Using text messaging abbreviations. Unless you’re absolutely certain that the recipient knows that TTYL means Talk To You Later, it’s best not to use the abbreviation.
Using too many big words. She says that filling your messages with all of the four- and five-syllable words that you know isn’t the best way to show them what you know.
I agree with her that using these and the other mistakes really do make you look bad. Go take a look at all 20 of them on her site. You will, I think, become more aware of what you are writing and how the recipients will respond to you.
