Clarity is the quality of being intelligible and coherent.
So is your writing clear? Easy to understand? Intelligible? Intelligent? Does it make sense?
When my kids were learning to write English essays, I taught them to read what they had written OUT LOUD. This is by far the best way to find out if your writing makes sense. Before you continue with this training, try this exercise: take one paragraph of your website/blog and read it aloud to yourself. Make a note of any places that you seemed to 'falter'. More than likely you need to check for errors because our brains are amazingly clever...your tongue is telling you that something isn't quite right.
Oops! Maybe that bit didn't sound so good after all!
Do your words flow easily? If they don't and there are no obvious mistakes, then read your work again and decide if it could be improved by adding or deleting a word here or there. Maybe you have used the same word two or three times in a sentence or paragraph (not necessarily 'wrong' but it will improve your vocabulary and your written work if you train yourself to think of alternative words). Perhaps you have simply used too many words - three or four, where a single word would do the same job.
Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com - your new best friends!
Reading aloud will also alert you to issues of intelligibility. If you have to stop and think about what you are reading, it probably won't make sense to your readers either. And be on your guard against repeating yourself. It's better to be short, correct and concise, than use a lot of words to make your writing seem more important.
This brings us to the next most important thing - punctuation - which is simply a set of rules, distinguished by simple markings (commas, full-stops etc) that make your writing perfectly clear to your readers...full stop! (exclamation mark)
P.S. There is a deliberate mistake on page 9. Find it and PM me - don't write it in the comments section. Any other errors - please let me know in the comments.
And then: "...are made of finest yak felt...", shouldn't that be: "...are made of THE finest yak felt..."? WIthout the capitalisation, of course?
At point 2, a space between 'to' and 'join' is missing.
I think I have my commas reasonably under control, even though I'm handicapped by my native language (Dutch) using a slightly different set of rules for their usage. But when the Oxford comma comes into play I get hopelessly lost. The colons and semicolons tend to drive me bonkers at times. If I can just remember what you wrote about them here, I might improve!
Reply
In the yak felt case, either would be correct. (One of the madnesses of English) I can say 'made of the finest yak felt' or 'made of finest yak felt'. The article is not compulsory here.
I'll check the spacing - it is so annoying when that happens!
You're great! I think I'll employ you as my personal editor!
Cheers
Ellie
But I thank you and will fix it pronto!
Yes - the hyphen between non and native is correct. I was going to add the correct use of hyphens but wondered if it was too long already. They are also a rather tricky subject and one that I see misused, unused and abused quite often.
You don't need to use 'alright' - it's just 'right' as in
Is that right? (or correct)
You've done amazingly well for a non-native speaker.
Thank you
Ellie
I've really enjoyed this - just shows how easy it is to let mistakes slip past - and I was trying really hard, too!
Thanks heaps
Ellie
(I cover the subject of slang and colloquial English in the next segment!)
I really like this training, because I need it.
Since my mother tongue is not the English language, it is hard to get some content well written.
Do you have maybe an idea how I can improve the quality of my content with a tool or something?
I use the free plug-in of Grammarly.com right now, but it's expensive to buy it.
Thanks,
Grtz,
Bert
I haven't used Grammarly myself, because being fairly proficient in English, I tend to trust my own judgement, or if I'm a bit puzzled, I simply type my specific problem into Google and check whatever website pops up. Some are better than others.
There are some 'spin-writing' tools available, but it is not recommended as google tends to pick up 'spun' content fairly quickly.
You can use Fivver and Elance to have your articles/content written, but what I found was that most of the people who offer to do writing are not native English speakers and the ones who are, charge a fair bit.
There are various translation tools available, but I am not altogether sure that they are very accurate. Some translations tend to come out pretty weird!
All I can really honestly recommend is that you get a good English writer to check your work for you. I have done so for a few people here, but it is time-consuming and I have to charge something or I would spend a lot of time and never get my own work done! You can send me a PM if you want to talk to me further about this option.
It's a good idea to ask for editing feedback here - specifically request that people check on your spelling, grammar etc.
I'd be glad to know if anyone knows of a good tool, but I really think it's just a case of learning, practising, checking, editing and asking for help to check your work.
I'm sorry not to be more helpful
Thank you for coming by. I appreciate it!
Cheers
Ellie
Cheers
Ellie
