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WARNING ! Everything you learned in school about writing is wrong

SM Switi

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What you have learned in school about writing :
1- You have learned to write what's so called "professional articles".
2- You have learned to use the super difficult key words.
3- You have learned that the longer the word the better. use words with more than 5 syllables.
4- You have learned to use scientific terminologies, you should demonstrate that you are an educated person.
5-You have learned that the harder the article to be understood by normal average person the better,where sometimes not even your own professor can get what is written, but you still get a big ugly A+ ! Why? because it's difficult, and when you write difficult articles that means you are brilliant student.

yes, in school you give our ultimate effort trying to write the most difficult sophisticated articles in the universe.
for example instead of saying
"I am happy"
you should say
"Recently some convivial chemical enzymes has been released which consequence the current mental condition" ..... or something even harder than that !

But do you really need that in the real world ? unless you are doing your PHP , you don't and you shouldn't .
unless you want to die cold, broken and alone!

But you learned everything form school, how to write A to Z and how to construct a word until you managed to write these big heavy articles .

your brain is wired to write like that and to use the academic rules ,because you envision that every other way of writing is wrong, you are still after that A+ buddy.

In real word there is no A+ everything is the other way around, if you want customers you should write in the customers language and use the average person rules not your 8th grade professor's.

So how can you write in the customers language ?
Simple !
Beneficial !
Readable !
Personal !


your writing should satisfy these four metrics.

but how ?!

first : measure
you should measure your current writing simplicity and readability, you can do that using Flesch reading formula.
It's default integrated within your Micorosft word processor.
from the review tab select Spelling and Grammar and ignore or fix all of your grammar errors after that this popup will appear .


Readability.PNG

It gives you statistical view of the readability of your document.
Your sentences shouldn't be long neither your words.
Each sentence should present one idea at a time.
The less passive sentences you have the better, active sentences are faster and easier to read and process (understand).
Flesch reading ease should be at average between 60-70 %.
Flesch grade level should be less than 10, this demonstrate the reader grade that on average can understand your writing.

And that's it.
when you write think in terms of your customers.
Is this hard for my customers to process ?
how can you make it more readable?
how can you make it more user oriented?
how can you make it personal to your customer ? over using "you" in Academic writing is disastrous but not with your customers.
how can your customer identify his main benefit instantly?
how much time does your writing take away from your customer? Is he even ready to give you that much of his time ?
 
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The Abundant Man

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Very valuable. Thank you for the information
 

ApparentHorizon

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yes, in school you give our ultimate effort trying to write the most difficult sophisticated articles in the universe.
for example instead of saying
"I am happy"
you should say
"Recently some convivial chemical enzymes has been released which consequence the current mental condition" ..... or something even harder than that !

Look man. You need to stretch out that 1.5 page paper to 2.

The double spacing and doubling the period size is not sufficiently providing enough material to meet the professors strict criteria.

What's annoying is that it's easier to write out these convoluted sentences than a simple one.

Do you know of any tools that does more than provide a score? Like gives you feedback on sentence structure and word substitutions?
 

AFMKelvin

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I already knew all this and it still irritates me to see people write fancy and long just because that's what they were programmed to do in school.

I was recently talking to a college student and I mentioned that I enjoyed writing. His response was, "but are you writing any college essays?" And that was that, my writing was not valuable enough since it wasn't a college essay.

It's funny how people connect to and enjoy music so much and the reason why is because the lyrical structure is simple. You can tell a whole story with just a few lines of lyrics and produce an emotional response in them.

I keep that in mind when writing anything, write like a musician by keeping it simple stupid.
 
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SM Switi

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Do you know of any tools that does more than provide a score? Like gives you feedback on sentence structure and word substitutions?

You can start with Microsoft Word Document processor. it has great capabilities and customization.
proof.PNG
settings.PNG
grammar.PNG
 

JAJT

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School largely teaches you formal writing techniques - which is a very important and valuable skill.

When you work with professionals in a business environment, formal language is expected more often then not. It shows a level of professionalism and intelligence that other professionals like to see.

Informal writing is best used when dealing with the public and (as expected) in informal situations. This is where all the fancy and flashy and exciting copywriting skills come into play.

Both formal and informal writing should be written with the psychology of your reader in mind. Both can be copy-written and both can be highly persuasive.

Keeping the reader in mind is 90% of what you need to know in order to write effectively. The other 10% is little tips, tricks, and techniques to boost your results.
 

Thoelt53

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What's annoying is that it's easier to write out these convoluted sentences than a simple one.
“I have made this [letter] longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” -Blaise Pascal

It takes great skill and effort to write concisely, simply and effectively.
 
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