Practice make perfect

byMBobb

774 followers

12 years ago

Is your writing perfect?

As I started writing again in my older years, I had this fear that people would not understand what I am trying to say because they would be concentrating on my misspellings, punctuations, improper grammar, and all the other nuances of the English language that I fell asleep on in Composition class when I went to school. (what a nice run-on sentence that was) All of this would stop me from trying to write because I became so focus in on having the perfect blog, free of all mistakes. However, what I was doing was silencing my voice. One thing I realized was that it really didn't matter how much I looked at my essay with a magnifying glass, there would always be one mistake. One word spellcheck did not changed because it was spelled write (pun intended), but did not fit the sentence. There would be one past and present verb conflict somewhere. However, regardless of the mistakes, my readers would comment. That let me know my writing was UNDERSTOOD. Is that the ultimate goal that we are all trying to achieve?

Aim for perfection!

Now before I go any further, we do owe it to our audience to take the time to proofread and present the best possible reading experience to them. We should take pride in our writing and the message we are trying to portray. There is nothing worse than having a great message that is not delivered and understood due to it being unreadable. Here is a basic checklist that we should do before we post any piece of writing.

• Perform a spell-check. Pay attention to the red squiggly lines under words. Also check for common mistakes like "an" for "and", double words "the the", and commonly misspelled words.
• Proofread your own work. If you have a person you trust, have them read it too. Do not rely solely on spellcheck. "Dew knot trussed spell chequers to fined awl miss steaks"
• Check for correct punication, comma usage, and spacing.
• Chack for correct capilazatiopn of words
• Check for number accoratcy within list (for example saying there are three type of said subject, but only listing two)

What ever you do, write!

Following the above checklist will help uncover some glaring mistakes. But regardless of your writing style, inability to spell, or even type slow, my advice to you is to WRITE. It is only through practice, understanding your mistakes as you fix them, and having the desire to improve will you begin to see your writing improve. If your message is strong, then common mistakes will be overlooked. I look at some of the news articles that is on YAHOO. In those articles, you find misspellings, bad grammar, and other mistakes, but guess what? We are still reading and the blogger message is being understood. Do not allow insecurities to deny the world of your voice. WRITE!