1. Check for wordiness.  Are there words and constructions you can eliminate without losing meaning?  Take them out.  If they’re not needed, they’re likely cramping your style.
2. Misused words.  Never use words and phrases whose exact meaning you’re not sure of.  Just because you saw a blog post using a term in reference to a specific meaning, it doesn’t mean the author used it correctly.  To make sure, check your writing software or reference multiple online sources.
3. Tone.  Is your tone appropriate for your audience?  If you’re not sure what’s appropriate for the audience, put yourself in their shoes.  Then, match your work’s tone to those reader’s values.
4. Gender-specific language.  Replace all gender-specific language with gender-neutral ones when there’s no certainty about gender.
5. Jargon.  Specialized terminology is fine when you’re writing to an audience who can understand them.  Otherwise, they should be left out in place of more reader-friendly alternatives.
6. Foreign language.  Same as jargon.  Can your prospective readers understand them?
7. Depth of language.  If you were instructed to write for children, it’s probably not a good idea to pull out the college-level language.  Write according to your readers’ level to facilitate better communication.

Take a travel article, for instance, that describes an island in the Philippines as the country’s “best-kept secret.”  That phrase has been used to describe so many places and so many things over the years that any weight it used to carry has been effectively diminished.  Chances are, some travel writer has also called a different island in the Philippines in a different article as its “best-kept secret.”

Same goes when a film critic calls a movie a “must see” or “can’t miss.”  Both are appropriate descriptions for a good film, but a review using them tends to sound particularly trite and lazy.  Surely, you can come up with more creative ways to extol a film’s virtues.

The point is, you have to recognize when you’re using similar cliches in your writing.   After all, good writing is really more than impeccable grammar and correct construction (an English corrector program can easily give you both).  If you want to compose text that’s vibrant and alive, you’ll need to avoid language that drives its quality down a notch and overused phrases will definitely do that.

If you want to avoid getting in the same boat, we highly recommend working with an outline.  As a blueprint for your document, it allows you to structure your ideas and content, such that you can see how it flows before you even begin your draft.  That way, you can catch potential pitfalls before you waste your time writing 2,000 words for something you’ll realize you’re better off scrapping.

Grammar and other writing mechanics aren’t the biggest problem for many writers and students.  We already have powerful grammar programs that can take care of fixing that area.  Ask any professor who regularly checks student essays about the most common writing problem and they’ll likely point to poor organization as the primary are most papers need improvement on.

With an outline, you can prevent many writing problems that your favorite grammar software can’t handle.    Gaps in logic?  You can discover them right from an outline.   Errors in organization?  Caught easily.  Poor structure, inadequate evidence and weak points of argument?  Chances are, you’ll easily make those out right from the outline.

They can be as short as a single word or as thought-filled as an entire sentence.  Either way, transitions will help readers follow your thought process (same as an English correction software will do for your grammar), making the connections between separate components clear and precise.

For many people, writing good transitions is a learned skill.  Here are ways to clue you in on how much more work you need to do on this end:

1. Reader feedback informs you that your writing feels abrupt, jumpy or choppy.  Others will say you need to improve on your work’s overall flow or that they had trouble following your train of thought.  These and other similar comments tend to point to a single thing: your transitions need plenty of work.
2. If you review your paper and it reads too much like a conversation, you probably lack transitions.  When people interact informally, it’s not unusual to jump from one topic to another.  That’s the way we normally think, after all.
3. If you write your paper in separate chunks, then you’ll always need to add transitions later when you put them together.

1. Make your paper manageable by chunking it down.  Break up a large paper into less-daunting sections and work on those small segments individually.  Smaller tasks, after all, should be less-stressful than larger ones.  Later, you can put it through a thorough review to see how each section works with all the rest.
2. Set milestones and goals for your writing.  After breaking up the work into more manageable sections, schedule your plan of attack.  Achieving small goals you set for yourself will help propel you to finishing the rest by reinforcing the positive behavior.
3. Give yourself breaks and rewards.  Be generous with yourself after achieving milestones and goals by giving yourself a break or a short reward.  This can be as simple as eating ice cream or watching TV, but genuinely helps re-energize you for the rest of the job.
4. Draft and edit separately.  Keeping those two activities as separate tasks helps simplify both, making them less stressful than the alternative of doing both at the same time.
5. Use software whenever possible.  Many editing and proofreading tasks can now be done by writing and grammar software.  Take advantage of technology to help simplify your work and you’ll find yourself with less stress on your hands.

There are many things that can go wrong when it comes to the form and appearance of your writing.  Some of the most common include:

1. Spelling.  Poor spelling is unacceptable, especially given that every word processor (even free ones) now has a built-in spellchecker.
2. Typos.  While typos may be excused if you’re writing on the fly, it just isn’t when you’re given sufficient time to edit your work.
3. Grammar.  If your sentences read like they’ve been fashioned by a third-grader or a second-language speaker who have a mere four months of English learning, you’re screwed.
4. Capitalization.  Never will you find excessive capitalization in professional writing.
5. Punctuation.  Poor punctuation leads to a mess that’s difficult to read.

Obviously, these are only examples of problems with form and appearance that plague many English writing.  If you wish to be rid of them, your best bet is to pay a brilliant proofreader and editor to comb through your writing for hours, fixing every bit of error they catch.  Barring that (it’s expensive, especially for the long term), you can always depend on the next best thing: an English correction program.  It comes with a one-time cost, perpetual usability  and works almost as well as a real, live proofreader.

As such, the following characteristics are highly-recommended for such types of writing:

1. Concise.  The shorter, the better, for obvious reasons.  With that said, don’t dumb down for the sake of being shorter.  Be as brief as you can be, while conveying your ideas completely.
2. Structured for scanning.  If a page is impossible to scan or skim, many readers will simply close the tab or hit the back button.  Letting readers glimpse your ideas by scanning is often the best way to entice them into reading the whole thing.
3. Use formatting that creates emphasis.  We’re talking about lists, headlines and typographical emphasis – all things that easily draw attention.
4. Manageable.  Keep pages manageable by breaking down long texts into separate sections.  Be sure there’s a logical method to the separation, though – doing it arbitrarily tends to add to the confusion.

It goes without saying, web writing needs to be paid the same attention to correctness that you subject your usual pieces to.  Do your revising processes as you always do, along with employing an effective writing correction program.

Here are some things you can do to help yourself take criticism in a more positive light:

1. Remind yourself of what criticism is about: it’s feedback you can use to  improve and strengthen your writing.
2. Any criticism offered up is one person’s opinion.  What one reader finds to be sub-standard, someone else could find very palatable.
3. Avoid reacting defensively.  It’s easy to dismiss criticism as invalid.  What’s harder is to take that criticism, evaluate its value objectively and use it to make your writing process better.
4. Remember that criticism is a knock on a specific piece of writing, rather than a personal affront.  They’re providing feedback on one work, not indicting your abilities.
5. Listen to positive feedback with the same intensity as the negative ones.  Sometimes, we miss the good people say about our work by obsessing on the bad stuff.
6. Take note of all the feedback you receive.  Is there a common theme?  Do they all identify a potential problem in your writing?  That’s almost always a clue that a criticism is valid and that you would benefit from evaluating your work with that feedback in mind.

If you find yourself doing the wrong things than what the instructor was looking for, try paying more attention to word clues that hint at what you’re being tasked to do.  They’re usually not that hard to figure out when you know what you’re looking for.  The following words typically come up:

• Analyze.   This means you’re being tasked to find the primary ideas (or components), explain how they relate to each other and evaluate their importance.
• Evaluate.  You’re supposed to give your opinion on a topic, duly supported by evidence or other authoritative sources.
• Discuss.  This usually hints at the need to present an argument for a specific point of view, leading towards a conclusion.
• Compare.  When you see this, you’re being asked to show the differences and similarities between two (or more) items.
• Contrast.  Here, you do a comparison by focusing on the differences.
• Illustrate.  This one asks you to clarify a concept or a statement by using examples, analogies or comparisons.
• Summarize.  A brief account of the main ideas is what you’re expected to deliver when you see this “clue.”

There are plenty more of these word clues that appear in assignment briefs and essay instructions, such as justify, prove, review, relate and comment on, among others.  The important thing is to recognize them quickly and jot them down to have a clearer picture of what you’re actually expected to turn up.

Regardless of what material you’re reviewing – a book, a film or a journal article – these tips should hold true:

1. Avoid the first person reference.  Objectivity is important in any review and using a first person pronoun, pretty much, defeats the whole point.
2. Don’t simply summarize the work.  Never mistake a review for a summary.  You’re supposed to give your opinion of the work, not recount it in your own words.
3. Don’t simply summarize the use of techniques.  The fact that you can recognize clever techniques used in film and novels is impressive.  However, detailing those techniques isn’t what a review is about.  Instead, dig deeper.  What about those techniques made the work good or bad?
4. Don’t merely discuss the plot and characters.  While the plot and characters may be the most compelling components of a material you’re reviewing, you will need to go beyond them most of the time.  This is especially true when reviewing visual arts, such as film and plays.

Like other types of writing, any review you produce can benefit from the help of a high-quality writing corrector.  With so much to do, the last thing you want to worry about are mechanical problems affecting your work.