Writing For Effect -Tips that Work!

Effective writing is the kind of writing that wins results, or in your case, it is going to win you grades. Write for making an impact, creating a ripple, making an impression and just not for the sake of writing on or because you are stuck with an assignment. Effective writing consists in style and style is cultivated by consideration of a few points. They are:

1. Variety is the Spice of Life:
Vary your sentence structure. An uninterrupted succession of subject-verb constructions makes a shaky and jerky reading. Take a series of sentences like the following:

For e. g: Moby Dick can symbolize both a manifestation of God or of the ultimate evil." Possible Variations:
"Melville renders Moby Dick as simultaneously a manifestation of God and as a symbol of the ultimate evil.
"That Moby Dick is subject to a dichotomy of interpretations is evident in his depiction as both a manifestation of God and of the ultimate evil."
"We may intimate that Moby Dick is a juxtaposition of both the divine and the diabolical."

2. Merge Short Sentences: Try reading your paper out loud. If it seems choppy, it would make a difficult reading. Combine small sentences into longer and more complex ones. For example:
"The elements which are predominant in all of Hardy's novels are supremacy of fate. Nature was also a focus of his novels. His characters are rustics. They belong to the simpler order of life."
This would be much stronger if combined:
"The predominant elements in Hardy's novels are: the supremacy of fate, nature. Meanwhile, his characters stand out for their rusticity and identification with the simpler order of life."
Avoid Using Passive Voice: Passive voice simply puts a touch of indolence and passivity in your writing. It makes an unimpressive and uninteresting reading, as the reader would feel more detached from the action, rather than being involved.
For e. g:
"The fact was proven through Napoleon's subsequent actions….." (Passive voice)
"Napoleon proved this fact through his subsequent actions..."

Avoid Mixing Up Tenses: - Don't drift from the present to the past to the conditional (from "he is" to "he was" to "he would have").
For e. g: "He thought that he is in trouble. He can't have believe that it was finally happening. He can have escaped it all." (inconsistent structure of tenses)
"He thought that he was in trouble. He couldn't have believed that it was finally happening. He could have escaped it all." (consistent structure of tenses)

Avoid Blanket Terms: Broad, non-specific words like "good," "bad," "nice," "important," "vivid," and "thing". As these terms tend to give away that your ideas and opinion aren't clear on the topic or your argument isn't strong enough.

The Author: Eddy Mackenzie ia a teacher trainer, an educationist and a columnist, above all he is a writing enthusiast and believes in cultivation of writing taste.