Today we’re talking about how to become a better writer and communicator. We are going to touch on how to write better sentences, how to improve writing skills, and how to communicate better. Our goal is that by the end of this read, you will learn how to write better. So, let’s get into it.

Why is writing important?

Writing can be anything from journalism, non-fiction, and fan fiction to free-riding. Whatever you want to write, write. Even Haiku is a form of poetry.

Writing is an essential communication skill that also helps your verbal communication. Let’s be honest here – what are we without communication? Mutes. Omit. Learn how to communicate your ideas and thoughts and make it easy to speak with all sorts of people. Writing every day will build discipline and engage your creative side. Research shows that writing can even benefit mental health. It can help you solve problems and influence those around you. The number one reason why I think writing is important is to leave something behind. We wouldn’t know all this history if people didn’t write about it. It’s not for nothing we are taught from childhood that “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

How to write better sentences

Let’s start with the basics. We are bombarded with thousands of words through articles, social media posts, and other daily content. As a result, delivering a clear message is more important than ever. But what if your grammar is not meeting the standards? People are not going to take you seriously. Why would they give you their time of day if the one thing you’re supposed to be doing – writing – you’re not doing right.

What makes a good sentence? According to Masterclass, “A good sentence expresses a complete thought and can clearly communicate an idea.” The trick to writing better sentences is keeping them simple. Less is more, and sometimes a simple sentence can throw a hell of a punch. Practice every day, and soon enough, you’ll be able to correctly punctuate and use parallelism throughout your writing. It’s like with everything else – practice makes perfect.

Related: How To Make Money With A Blog

Using an AI-powered grammar and spell-checking tool such as Grammarly takes seconds or minutes. Yet, it can do wonders for your writing, so don’t miss that shot. It will take your writing and make it better. No worries, we will detail that subject a bit later.

What writing is all about

Here’s a story. I grew up with a guy in the local news business; let’s call him Boris. Boris owns an online news platform, and they’re pretty successful for a local media outlet. Maybe it’s because there’s virtually no competition, but that’s another subject. I also had to mention there’s no competition, so the rest of this story makes sense to you. ‘How can he write that bad and still make money?’ Well, that’s the world we live in.

His website pushes five to ten articles daily, with no more than 300 words per article. As you can guess, it’s no Shakespeare-type writing. It’s Haiku! I’m kidding. Why write if you’re not going to indulge in a bit of fun on the way and give it a little personality? The last sentence is about my haiku joke, but it can reflect on Boris’ news business.

Someone would read what he wrote if he researched and differentiated himself in his writing. At least for reasons other than laughing at his life’s work. Seriously, people all over town laugh every day at those three sentences in what-they-call articles. The funniest thing is 90% of those words are copy-paste from another website. There’s no journalism or investigations, just Boris, his notebook, and a copy-paste function.

When they write something themselves, it’s filled with grammatical errors, overused punctuation, and rarely makes sense. I feel pity when I see what people write under his articles in social media comments, going as far as insulting and swearing. He still got a following, tho. I told Boris several times that finding software or getting someone to proofread would be a good idea, but he doesn’t think it’s needed. Can’t make heads or tails about it, but if he doesn’t care, why should I?

What’s the point of this story?

The point of my story is don’t be like Boris. If writing is your thing and you want people to read your stuff, make sure to do it correctly. Do your research and thinking, and spill those words on a blank paper. Improve your storytelling skills and make your content enjoyable. Make sure your grammar and readability are par excellence by using a spell-checking tool. Now I’ll get into which tools you can use to improve grammar and communication.

Tools to improve writing skills

You can use a few tools to make the best of your writing and deliver your message like a boxing punch. That’s right – hit your readers in the face with it. Again I with the punches. And keep it grammatically correct while at it. Readability is also crucial, so make sure a twelve-year-old can read it. Trust me, twelve-year-olds don’t read Boris’ news portal.

Related: The Best Tools For Writing A Book

These tools will not just modify and help your words make more sense. They will teach you how to write better along the way. While the AI is doing most of the work, you still have to approve and reject changes in your text. After a while of doing this task manually, you will figure out all the different ways you can construct your sentences for effective delivery.

Without further ado, here are the best tools to improve writing skills:

Grammarly (Free & Premium)

We have used Grammarly‘s premium subscription since day one at Swanky Fella. Their tools have helped me write better for over a decade, so I may be biased. The reason why I have used this tool to spell-check and fix my grammar is that it works. It does a couple of things and does them very well. It even has plagiarism-detection features and helps with well-worn phrases everyone uses.

How does Grammarly work

It’s simple to the core. You open up a new document or upload an existing one and set your goals. The goals are the domain, intent, audience knowledge, and formality level. While spilling your words, Grammarly will suggest how to improve your writing. It even considers the context of your sentences and provides synonym suggestions to make your text more readable and concise. You decide to approve or reject the changes and then get back to writing.

When you’re done, you click the ‘Plagiarism’ icon, and it takes a moment to check your content against billions of pages around the web. If sentences sound too similar to something someone else wrote, Grammarly will highlight them, and you’ll be able to change them. This way, you will be able to create 100% original content.

You can try their free version, but if you are serious about writing, we strongly recommend you go for the premium version. You will need a professional-grade tool to maximize your writing impact, and free tools offer only basic corrections. Here’s what Grammarly says about the difference between their free and premium packages.

“Grammarly Premium is a paid upgrade that offers over 400 types of checks and features, checks for grammatical errors, provides vocabulary enhancement suggestions, detects plagiarism, and provides citation suggestions.

While the free version of Grammarly allows you to access some of the features we have to offer, Grammarly Premium is the ultimate tool to ensure that everything you write on the web is captivating, precise, and easy-to-read.”

Hemingway app (Free)

Although Grammarly already does an excellent job with readability, you can make your text more readable by loading it into HemingwayApp and making quick changes. The app will give you a readability level grade and, depending on your target audience, suggestions to adjust your words to make them sound simpler. It’s mostly about breaking complicated sentences into smaller fragments and making them sound more natural. The Hemingway editor will give suggestions on adverbs, passive voice use, simpler alternatives to phrases, and sentences that are hard or very hard to read. Remember that this tool will not work for you as Grammarly does – it will just give you suggestions. It’s on you how you will use that data to shape your words into meaningful sentences.

Linguix (Free & Premium)

Linguix is a great alternative to Grammarly if you’re tight on the budget. A personal subscription costs only $5 a month. You can try it for free, but using their free tool will get only basic writing corrections. According to Linguix, their speed, accuracy and breadth of suggestions on words and phrasing far exceeds the competition.

You must be aware that what you pay is what you get. As a cheaper Grammarly alternative, you will get your money’s worth, but with fewer features than Grammarly can offer.

Depending on your budget, decide which tool you will use, but we recommend you don’t skip using these grammar-checking and readability tools. Whether you’re a writer, business owner, or student, using a reliable writing assistant is crucial, and both Grammarly and Linguix are good options for writers. Complement one of these with the free HemingwayApp, and there will be no end for you.

How to communicate effectively

Already concluded, written communication is vital to surviving in the modern information age. We’ve got you covered if you want to write better emails, letters, books, or even text messages. Here are our tips on how to communicate effectively:

• KISS, keep it simple stupid
• establish and state goals that you plan to bring to the reader
• watch the tone of your writing, and decide whether formal, informal, or neutral is what your readers want
• keep it clear and only include words and sentences that support your goals
• proofread and spell-check, if I have not been clear enough
• practice makes perfect
• read a lot and see how and what others are writing

Trust me, you can’t go wrong with these. We even made an infographic on how to communicate effectively if you want to keep it handy. Or send it to Boris.

So, how to become a better writer and communicator? By writing, and writing, and writing. And then writing some more. Start journaling if you have no inspiration. Seriously, you’re not going to improve your writing skills until you have converted hundreds of thousands of words into meaningful content. Then, it becomes natural, and you can communicate more effectively. So, get going and enjoy the ride.

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