Being a better wordsmith

>> Good writing is a skill that anybody can attain. Here are some random tips for improving yours – I go into much more detail in my half or full-day workshops.

>> Write with your own voice. People generally get writer's block when they attempt to put words together in a style which is not natural to them. Think about the idea in your head, and how you would express it verbally. Now try to type those words onto your screen. More often than not, you'll end up with the basis of a well-constructed paragraph. And, unlike with speech, you have the luxury of going back over those words, pruning the unnecessary ones and tidying up your grammar.

>> Be simple. You don't need a huge vocabulary to write sentences that people will understand. The inclusion of long or obscure words will annoy more people than it impresses. The idea is to make as many people as possible understand as much as possible of what you're writing. Some newspapers instruct their journalists to assume their readers have a reading age of less than 10.

>> News writing is all about pyramids. Upside down pyramids, to be precise. Think of a triangle with its base facing up and the apex facing down, and use this as a model for news items. Imagine writing your words inside that triangle – the most important material goes into the top. As the pyramid slims down, the content gets less and less important. Write in punchy, one-sentence paragraphs where possible, with your intro summarising the entire story in a maximum of 30 words. The second sentence adds a bit more detail; the third a little more. After that, complete the picture in whatever order seems most logical. News stories tend to end abruptly, unlike features which generally sign off with a memorable paragraph.

The way good writing is taught in school is not always useful in the world of media and business. Some of the worst writing I see is in school newsletters, which sort of says it all, really.

>> Ignore your teachers. Despite what they taught you at school, it's perfectly acceptable to begin a sentence with "and" or "but". They're much better than "furthermore" and "however" or the ghastly "moreover" and "notwithstanding".

>> Let your readers breathe. Read your words aloud and see if they sound natural. If you find yourself gasping for breath, you haven't punctuated your sentences properly. You can generally do pretty well with commas and dashes – no need for colons or semicolons unless you're really insistent, and you understand how to use them. Most people don't. As for exclamation marks ... you'd be amazed how much they can annoy people. Use them sparingly, and perhaps not at all!

>> Finish what you start. Try to avoid rewriting as you go along – it has a habit of breaking your rhthym and knocking your confidence. Get your work roughly in shape by completing a first draft, and then attend to the details after that.

Back in journalism school, they taught us to think of inverted pyramids when writing news copy. It's a slightly weird idea to explain, but honesty ... it works.