A general set of guidelines for writing style

Your writing is a reflection of your thinking.  A bad write up shows clouded thoughts. When you make an attempt to write clearly, you automatically improvise your writing as well. Things like the layout, sequence of sentences and punctuation may seem like unimportant  and insignificant but you may not realise that focussing on them can greatly improve  upon your understanding of the material.   By the fundamental approach and a universally followed goal, practising to write regularly, again and again is the way to write well. When you keep doing something again and again, you surely improve at it. But some things to surely watch out for, are:

Sequencing of sentences: reading a document should be as smooth as perhaps walking. Sentences should lead from one to another in a very smooth manner. A good English write up is the one which has short sentences and a lot of structure that connects across sentences. If you abruptly change your topic without actually taking the reader through a smooth transition, you often distract and confuse the reader. A change in topic should be from a new paragraph. Some signal words and phrases should be used to prepare the reader for the new topic or change in idea.

Don’t create sandwiches: sandwiches are common to create in academic writing and easier to find when you are explaining in the concepts. A sandwich is something here by you squeeze in another idea in between one idea and it is a clear cut indication of poor organisation skills in writing and writers must be very cautious to avoid the same. Mostly when arranging, you should be careful of first introducing those topics that are general in nature and then carefully graduate towards more specific sub topics that can only be understood after the basics are clearer. You must say all that you want to say about one topic before you decide to move on to another one. This approach is very helpful for the reader as well.

Create sharp sentences: create short and sharp sentences and include as few commas as possible. Usually writers fear that they would lose the attention of the reader if they write short sentences but that is not the case so and as a writer don’t let that  anxiety develop into you when you create sentences.

Adopt these few techniques and be the writer you want to be. More on this in the next blog!!