Improving Your Writing Style (continued)

Sentence Fluency

When a piece of writing has a flow and rhythm to its sentences, it is said to have sentence fluency. It is created by using a variety of sentence lengths and types, and combining them in different ways can have different effects. Having a variety of sentence structures helps to avoid monotony in one's writing.

Deleting extraneous words also helps improve your writing.

Recall how you arrange your ideas specifically in a paragraph. To write a smooth sentence, you need to arrange your ideas within your sentence to create the greatest effect.

Because many people write much like they talk, with no particular order, adding ideas to the end as they come to mind, they have a rambling sort of style known as "word dump": everything in the person's mind is dumped onto the paper in no particular order. As a starting point, there is nothing wrong with this; it can be a very effective method of getting ideas down on paper. As a finishing point, it is not going to be very beneficial. It's important, if you "dump" your ideas down, that you go back to your words and think about them, and revise them for effect. This will help in reducing repetitive ideas, in making vague words specific, and in rearranging phrases and sentences for maximum effect.

Diction

Specific word choices—active verbs, concrete nouns, specific adjectives—help readers visualize what is happening on the page. Making concise and precise word choices will help you to become a good writer. Choosing the right words to help a sentence flow and create fluency might include using alliteration, polysyllabic words, and consonance. If you want to be more abrupt in your flow, or want to break up the rhythm, you may consider using onomatopoeia, or short, monosyllabic words.

Voice

Voice is a difficult element to master, but it is closely tied with sentence fluency and word choice. It is an essential element of the writer's personality, and can be serious or funny; objective or passionate; impersonal or chatty.

Think about characters in texts: their personalities—their styles—are often revealed through the words they speak. Practicing different types of voices in your writing can help you discover your own natural writing voice. Try writing a journal entry that is exploring something exciting that happened to you. Now, write about that same event, but be angry. Your sentence structures and word choices will be different because of the voice you're trying to convey.

When looking at improving your writing style, refer to the English Language Arts Handbook for Secondary Students , focusing on sentence variety (pp. 90-91), word choice (p. 86-88), and voice (pp. 44, 180-181).

Time to Read


  1. Read pp. 86-92, "Style in Writing," in your English Language Arts Handbook for Secondary Students. Pay particular attention to sentence variety and word choice.
  2. Voice is the distinct personality, style, or point of view of a piece of writing or any other creative work. Voice is what Simon Cowell is talking about when he tells "American Idol" contestants to make a song their own and not just do a note-for-note karaoke version.
  • Read pp. 180-181, "Voice," in your English Language Arts Handbook for Secondary Students. While these pages focus on the oral component of our voice when responding orally, it is important to note that our pacing and tone in writing is part of our writer's voice and impacts our overall message, as well.
  1. Read Danica's passage and comments based on her use of the grammatical elements. Do her changes improve her writing? Do they improve the effectiveness?