Es­sen­tial Writ­ing Skills

Above all else, mas­ter­ing ba­sic writ­ing skills is im­por­tant. No mat­ter how per­sua­sive you are ver­bally, if you can­not put those words into clear, thought­ful, gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect writ­ing, your ar­gu­ments may prove more off-putting than enticing.

And this is pre­cisely why I rec­om­mend de­vel­op­ing your ba­sic writ­ing skills be­fore you try to delve deep into copy­writ­ing and other forms of sales writing.

How to Im­prove Your Writ­ing Skills

Good Gram­mar is the Minimum

When it comes to copy­writ­ing, no one is go­ing to be im­pressed by your good gram­mar. In fact, no one will no­tice your gram­mar at all un­less it is bad. And this is pre­cisely why it is im­por­tant to think about good gram­mar be­ing the start­ing point for any sales letter—not a lofty goal to achieve.

If you have a weak back­ground in writ­ing, there’s a good chance you are fre­quently mak­ing gram­mat­i­cal er­rors that most read­ers per­ceive as a poor re­flec­tion on you. For in­stance, you might use sen­tence frag­ments of­ten; or you might have sub­­­ject-verb agree­ment is­sues. Ei­ther way, you are prob­a­bly re­peat­ing these mis­takes again and again with­out even notic­ing it.

In fact, writ­ers make these mis­takes all the time. And when they do, it not only makes them look bad, but it can even con­fuse the reader by pro­vid­ing the wrong information.

So what can you do about it? You can start by iden­ti­fy­ing your ar­eas of weak­ness; and then prac­tic­ing gram­mar drills to improve.

Do­ing “gram­mar drills” isn’t on the top of the list of the things you want to spend your week­end do­ing, but if you truly as­pire to be a MASTER copywriter—not a mediocre copywriter—you must start by mas­ter­ing gram­mar first.

When it comes to do­ing gram­mar drills, you have a num­ber of op­tions. I per­son­ally rec­om­mend that you use one of the fol­low­ing three sites, all of which pro­vide free in­for­ma­tion and drills:

1. https://odl.vwv.at/english/odlres/res8/Grammar/grammar.htm

-This site will fa­mil­iar­ize you with with ba­sic gram­mar con­struc­tion rules through var­i­ous gram­mar ex­er­cise such as mul­ti­ple choice and fill-in-the-blanks.

2. https://dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/drills/index.shtml

-Pro­vid­ing a wide va­ri­ety of gram­mar drills rang­ing from agree­ment and pro­noun ref­er­ence to sen­tence strength to words com­monly con­fused, this site will al­low you to mas­ter gram­mar in no time.

3. https://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises_list/alle_grammar.htm

-If you want to be a mas­ter when it comes to gram­mar rules and con­struc­tion, this is the site to go to.

As with most things in life, your time is prob­a­bly best used con­cen­trat­ing on your prob­lem ar­eas. So, rather than re-learn­ing Eng­lish gram­mar in its en­tirety, you should elim­i­nate your weak­nesses. You can use the fol­low­ing tests to iden­tify which ar­eas you should work on:

1. https://www.wordl-english.org/diagnostic_grammar.htm

-This site pro­vides a three-part test that will clearly de­fine your weak gram­mar areas.

2.https://www.dailywritingtips.com/grammar-test-1

-If you want to know how much you know about ba­sic gram­mar in a short pe­riod of time, opt to take this 20-ques­­tion test.

3. https://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/grammar_mastery.asp

-To ac­quire a more com­pre­hen­sive re­port on your gram­mar knowl­edge, tak­ing this site’s 50-ques­­tion exam is the best choice.