better writing

How to Proofread Your Writing

For many people, one of the most difficult aspects of writing is the proofreading process. If you have been working on a paper or a writing assignment for a long period of time, it’s easy to read words into your writing that aren’t there and accidentally miss grammatical mistakes within the writing. One of the best ways to prevent this is to get someone to proofread your writing, since they look at it from a completely fresh perspective. The issue for many, however, is that there often isn’t someone around who’s willing or able to proofread your writing. If you find you often miss mistakes when proofreading and can’t get someone else to proofread it, there are a few steps you can take which will give you a better chance of catching your writing errors.

Walk Away

One of the best steps you can take when proofreading your own work is to take some time away from it, even if that is only for an hour or two. A full day or two is even better and one of the reasons you should learn to not procrastinate. When you try to proofread as soon as you finish writing, you still have it in your head what you meant to say, and this can often overwrite what’s actually on the pages. Taking some time away will allow you to read your writing with “fresh eyes” and will make it much more likely you’ll spot errors.

Listen to Your Text

If you don’t have time to walk away for a bit of time, listen to your writing instead of reading it (you can use the proofread tool available on wordcounter). Switching things up so you listen to what you wrote instead of reading it will again will make it more likely you will catch your mistakes rather than if you reread the text.

Print and Read

Another way to increase the chances of catching mistakes is to print out your writing instead of proofreading it on the computer. Trying to proofread on your computer makes it easier to miss mistakes than when you proofread with the writing physically in front of you.

Read from Bottom to Top

An effective way of proofreading which forces you to look at the writing from a different perspective is to proofread from the bottom to the top. Instead of proofreading as one would normally read the writing, start at the bottom and read towards the top. It won’t make any sense, but that’s the point. It will force you to look at the individual words written, rather than skimming over sentences.

Read It Out Loud

Another way to increase your chances of finding mistakes when proofreading is to read your writing out loud instead of silently in your mind. Reading silently increases your chances of inserting skipped words that aren’t on the paper but you meant to write. Audibly saying the words makes it much more difficult to skip over these types of mistakes.

Don’t Do Everything at Once

When you do sit down to proofread, don’t try to correct all the problems in a single read through. Instead, concentrate on a specific aspect you want to make sure is correct. For example, concentrate on word choice for the first read through. Then concentrate on finding grammatical errors and sentence structure mistakes on the second read through. For the third reading, look specifically for spelling mistakes. Yes, this means you are going to have to read through your writing several times instead of a single time, but that will also make it much more likely you’ll find all the mistakes you may have made.

Use Spellcheck and GrammarCheck

Using a spell checker can help you spot words which have been repeated, words which have reversed letters and other common spelling mistakes, but you should never rely on it as the only proofreading you do. While a spell checker is great for its specific job, it fails at a lot of other things, especially when it comes to grammar. “There” is spelled correctly, but it’s still wrong if the proper word for a sentence is “their.” A grammar check can help out with these mistakes. Both are tools which can help you find errors you may miss on your own, but they don’t replace actually rereading your writing and looking for mistakes.

Make a Proofreading Checklist

You know your weaknesses better than anyone else, and you should make a checklist of these weaknesses. This will allow you to double and triple check these areas of your writing when you proofread. If you don’t currently know your writing weaknesses, begin to pay attention to the remarks when you get assignments back so you can create the checklist. By paying special attention to the writing areas where you tend to be weakest, you’ll improve and make sure you aren’t consistently making the same writing mistakes on your papers.

(Photo courtesy of With Associates)

How to Increase Your Essay Word Count

When you have an essay assignment with a minimum word count, one of the worst feelings is when you believe you have finished only to find that you’re still well below the minimum you have to reach (as opposed to having too many words). Many students try to solve this problem by rewriting the essay’s sentences to make them wordier or splitting contractions. While these do increase word count, they usually make the essay weaker in the process. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you ever find yourself in a position where you need to increase the number of words for an essay, below are some simple techniques which can help you add to your writing while improving it instead of writing unneeded filler.

Add Examples

Skim through your essay looking for any place you have used an example to make a point. In most cases, you should be able to provide additional examples which will make your essay stronger by showing your understanding of the topic while also increasing the word count. You can also go through the essay and look for statements made where inserting an example would be appropriate to help support the statement.

Address Different Viewpoints

An effective way of increasing word count and improving your essay at the same time is to address different viewpoints to your own. You have the opportunity to discuss how these alternative viewpoints differ from the conclusions you have made, and it gives you an opportunity to explain why you believe your conclusions are superior. This shows you have considered a range of different opinions while coming to your conclusions, and in doing so make your essay stronger while adding more words.

Clarify Statements

When you find the statements in your writing, if inserting an example doesn’t make sense, then clarifying the statement may be appropriate. This can be achieved by inserting one or more specific statements to clarify the original one. A common way to do this is to follow the statement with, “In other words…” It’s important not to over-clarify statements or use this for every statement you write as it will begin to look like filler, but using it sporadically throughout your essay can increase the word count and show you perfectly understand the points you’re trying to make.

Find Additional Sources

Another way to improve your essay and increase word count is to find additional sources you haven’t previously mentioned which support the statements and conclusions you have made. The more sources you have, the stronger the essay will be in most cases. Spending some time searching for additional sources to add to the essay can be a great way to add quality content to it.

Use Quotations

Chances are you already have appropriate quotations in your essay, and if that’s the case, skip over this suggestion. Adding more will likely not add to your essay. If you haven’t used any, however, finding appropriate quotations from experts in the field that support your statements can be an excellent way to add words to your essay while improving it at the same time.

Rework Introduction and Conclusion

If all of the above haven’t enabled you to reach your word count minimum and you need some filler, look to put it in your introduction and conclusion rather than the body of the essay. Most teachers give more leeway with the introduction and conclusion to be wordy than the guts of the essay. This is something you should try to avoid if at all possible (it’s never good to be wordier than you have to be), but if you tried everything else, it’s better to do it in these two places than in the heart of the essay.

Page Count

If you’re writing an essay which has a minimum page count instead of a minimum word count, the above suggestions will work, but you have a bit more wiggle room as well. You can make slight adjustments to the font and font size you use through a Words per Page Counter. As long as you don’t go overboard, this can be a relatively easy way to increase page count while not taking away from the essay.

(Photo courtesy of Caleb Roenigk)

Word Counter Keyword Density Feature

One of the many Word Counter features writers often find useful is “Keyword Density.” This feature can be found below the “Details” feature in the right sidebar of the website. Keyword Density gives writers an understanding of the words they are using most frequently which allows them to make any necessary adjustments to their word use frequency.

Keyword Density has a default setting for all those who come to the site for the first time. The ten words most frequently used words in the writing will appear in the sidebar excluding common words. For those who want more control over Keyword Density, you can make several changes to better customize it to your liking. To do this, you can click the options symbol directly to the left of the words “Keyword Density” in the right sidebar. You can also access the options by clicking on the Options Button (at the bottom right of the Word Counter text area), then clicking on “Keyword Density.”

Your first option is a checkbox which allows you to decide whether or not you want any keywords displayed or not. If keyword information isn’t useful to you, you can uncheck the box and they won’t display in your sidebar. If you want them to display, keep the checkbox checked.

The next option you have is to determine the number of keywords you want displayed in the sidebar. The default is 10 words, but you can increase or decrease that number to your desired level. For example, you could choose to only display the top 5 words by inputting “5” or you could display the top 20 words be entering “20.” You can change this as many times as you want depending on what you happen to be writing at the time.

The last option allows you to decide whether or not you want to include common words in the keyword density display. The default is to exclude these (such as I, am, he, she, your, etc.), but if you want to include them, you can check the box and they will show up.

By using the different options available, you can better customize the Keyword Density information to meet your specific writing needs. The information can be quite helpful for those who are writing for themselves or others with specific search engine optimization (SEO) goals in mind, but can also be quite useful to the average writer. Using this feature can help you see what words you may be using excessively so that you can vary them in your writing more. If nothing else, it can be interesting to see what words you use the most when you write.

We are always looking to improve the different aspects of this site. If you feel there is something we could do to make the Keyword Density feature better or more useful to writers, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment. Many of the current features were past recommendations from users and we do listen to the suggestions you offer.

(Photo courtesy of Cristian Cardenas)

Don’t Lie About Your Writing

It’s funny that a profession that often prides itself on telling the truth offers so many opportunities to lie. Journalists often claim to pursue the truth at all costs. Fiction writers spout off about finding “the truth” in their stories. Almost every kind of writer espouses some sort of devotion to the truth. Yet every year, more and more writers are caught lying. Whether it’s passing off someone else’s work as your own (plagiarism) or faking reviews on Amazon, there’s a lot of lying going on.

It would seem like common sense that you shouldn’t lie. Yet in the crowded, competitive, demanding world of writing, too many people take shortcuts in their efforts to get ahead of the pack. But lying in your writing can destroy a career, even if you don’t rely on writing to make a living. When I was in graduate school, I knew someone who faked his entire dissertation. All of the interviews, transcripts, and statistics were fake. He couldn’t find the data and people to support the “ground breaking” conclusion he was trying to draw so he made it all up. He got caught and tossed out of school. His future career in that field and all of the teaching and researching he hoped to do were gone because he lied.

Granted, that’s a pretty spectacular case of career suicide, but there are many others. Remember James Frey who made up a memoir and got taken down by Oprah? Or Jonah Leher who faked quotes attributed to Bob Dylan (among quite a few other infractions). Or Jayson Blair who fabricated almost every aspect of his stories for The New York Times? While some of these notorious liars have gone on to resurrect their careers, don’t think for one minute that it would be as easy for the average Joe to return to successful work after such a debacle.

So, since it doesn’t seem to be obvious to some, what constitutes lying? Take a look. (And don’t say that these are genius marketing techniques, or ways to set yourself apart from the crowd. They’re lies, pure and simple.)

Faking statistics and data

It’s not okay to say that 30% of people agree with your position if there is no hard data to support that conclusion. You don’t get to make things up based on “gut feelings” or because you really want to write a spectacular article. Neither do you get to interview four of your friends and when three of them agree with your premise, report that as a 75% majority.

Faking quotes

If someone didn’t say it, you don’t get to put it in their mouth anyway. You also can’t take quotes out of context. Just because your point is better made if you leave out the last half of the quote doesn’t mean you get to use it that way. You have to report quotes accurately and keep them within the context in which they were uttered.

Calling fiction non-fiction

If you made it up, it’s fiction. If it’s “based on” your life but not a factual recounting of your life, it’s fiction and not a memoir. If you write about an event that never happened or things that were never said, it’s fiction. Never pass something you made up as something that really happened.

Passing off old work as new

Yes, reporters and magazine writers repurpose old work all the time. They take that parenting article about camping with the kids and re-slant it so that it works for an outdoors magazine. It means that you can reuse research and save some time when writing the article. As long the work and wording is new, this is okay. What isn’t okay is repeating the earlier work word for word. Editors pay for new content. Finding out that the piece they just published has already appeared in another publication, verbatim, isn’t going to make them happy. Especially if you sold it as original work.

Plagiarism

This is stealing other people’s work and passing it off as your own. This is never okay and it’s a lesson that should have been learned in elementary school. If you use someone else’s work, you have to give proper credit to the original author.

Writing fake reviews of your work

This has become a rampant problem on sites like Amazon. Authors create fake accounts to give glowing accounts of their own work. It’s an effort to push their book to the top, to make it stand out amidst all the other books. It’s harder than you think, though, to craft believable “voices” for your reviews. They will all end up sounding the same. Worse, if your book is receiving scads of terrible reviews and then you’ve got these fifty five star reviews, someone’s going to figure out that you’re shilling your own work. Also, don’t pay for positive reviews. It’s fine to request reviews, but no ethical reviewer will take money in exchange for their opinion.

Altering reality

We often wish that things had happened more dramatically than they did. Sometimes writers “embellish” a story to make it seem more dramatic or world-altering than it was. Really they’re just stretching the facts and that’s not okay. If it was boring when it happened, then you either need to report it that way or find something more exciting to cover. You’re writing a non-fiction piece, not a screenplay. Adding in explosions, deaths and drama is lying.

Pretending to be somewhere you aren’t

You cannot pretend to be filing stories from Iraq if you’re in Cleveland. If you want to report “from” a region, you’d better be there.

Doctoring photographs

Okay, a little Photoshopping isn’t a bad thing. Touching up colors, etc. is acceptable. What’s not acceptable is putting people into photos who weren’t there, or capturing “action” that never happened so you can report on some unbelievable event.

It’s not worth the risk to lie. In this day and age it’s incredibly easy to get caught. Everything can be cross-checked on the Internet or with a quick phone call or Twitter post. No matter what you think you’re accomplishing by lying, or how good you feel that you’re pulling one over on people, sooner or later it will come to an end and you will end up with no credibility and no career. So just don’t do it.

(Photo coourtesy of einalem)

Become a Better Writer: Preserve and Improve Your Reading Skills

It’s no secret that reading and writing go hand in hand. Most successful writers are avid readers. We learn our craft by reading and dissecting the works of others. We take inspiration from them and we learn from their failures. But our reading skills may not be what they once were. New research shows that the Internet, with all of its links, short paragraphs, and volumes of information may be changing the way we read and the way our brains process information. And not for the better.

Many people now report problems reading more challenging works, or concentrating on a book for a sustained period of time. Even easier works are getting skimmed and major plot points and facts are being missed. We’re becoming so used to skimming for key words and hopping from a link to a video to an image that we’re losing our ability to process information in a deep and meaningful way.

This presents a problem for writers. Since our ability to write is so closely tied to our reading skills, deteriorating reading skills equal deteriorating writing skills. Think about it: If you can’t read a challenging work, or concentrate long enough to read anything longer than a grocery list, what makes you think you can write anything that’s lengthy or challenging? What makes you think you can edit your book if you can’t concentrate or stop skimming long enough to make sense of what you’ve written and detect the flaws in it?

Deteriorating reading skills might not be a problem if you’re writing for the web and you can get away with always writing small bits of information and editing tiny chunks, but it’s a problem if you’re writing novels, non-fiction books or long manuals. To write well, we writers need to actively preserve and improve our reading skills. If you find yourself struggling, here are some ideas to sharpen and protect your ability to read deeply.

Read without distractions

Don’t read with the TV on or your cell phone beeping next to you. Turn it all off and just read. If you’re looking up and down at the TV every five minutes or checking your messages, you’re simply further fragmenting your attention span. Find a quiet place, turn off the distractions and just read.

Take it offline once in a while

The Internet makes it easy to research a topic very quickly. But to preserve your ability to make sense of information you need to take it offline once in a while. Check out some actual books about your topic and study them. Not only will you be improving your reading skills, you might find that you end up with higher quality research and a better understanding of the topic when you engage deeply with the material instead of just hitting the high points. This understanding will translate on the page in the form of higher quality work.

Observe yourself

If you find yourself skimming a work, stop, go back to where your concentration faltered, and begin again. Become aware of when your reading turns to skimming, or when you find yourself thinking about what to make for dinner while you’re simply scanning a work. Turn your full attention back to the work.

Take breaks

Reading deeply is like exercise. It’s easy once you’ve gotten in shape but it’s hard and sometimes painful if that muscle isn’t up to it yet. Pace yourself and take breaks if you need to. Fifteen minutes of total concentration is better than an hour of frustration, frequent skimming, and telling yourself that it’s almost over. If you need a break, take one. You’ll be able to engage for longer periods after you practice for a while.

Reread

After you’ve read something, particularly something that really challenges you, go back and read it again. You’ll probably be surprised to find that there are still areas that you skimmed, or pieces that you missed entirely. The more you read, the less often this will happen and the less rereading you’ll have to do, but in the beginning of training or retraining your brain, rereading can be a valuable way to improve comprehension.

Take your time

We’re so busy today that it’s hard to simply sit down and read but that’s exactly what you’ll have to do. Reading fast is not the way you improve your understanding and concentration. You have to slow down.

Take notes

You probably haven’t done this since college, unless you were researching an in-depth project. Note-taking can increase your comprehension by forcing you to slow down and identify key pieces of information.

Go deep

Read several books about the same topic. Read several of one author’s books. The more you read on one subject or study one author, the better you become at seeing connections amongst the concepts, or noticing what makes this novelist successful (or not). Flitting from author to author or subject to subject can be fun, but it can also contribute to some of the same problems that the Internet presents.

Regurgitate

When you finish reading a work, take the time to write out a summary or a review of the work. Again, this is probably something you haven’t done since your school days, but writing out what you remember from the work shows you how well you’re comprehending it. If all you can say about “Watership Down” is, “It was good. There were bunnies,” clearly you’ve got a problem. If you can describe the characters and the themes of the book and summarize the whole plot, you’re on your way.

More than ever our reading skills are not something we can take for granted. It used to be that when you finished school you were pretty well set for a meaningful reading life. You didn’t have to do much to keep your skills sharp. Simply reading for pleasure and reading the newspaper was often enough Now, though, deep reading skills are harder to maintain. The Internet is a great thing but if we’re not careful, it can actually rewire our brains in ways that are not favorable to writers who depend on reading comprehension and concentration to work. Practice your reading the same way you practice your writing. It’s the only way to ensure that your reading activities can help, not hinder, your writing efforts.

Tag: better writing