Do you want to write great term papers and articles and generally become a great writer? You will learn how to write superbly.

We will first cover the basics of writing. The basics include spelling and grammar.

Any literature you write must contain good spelling. Use a dictionary when you are unsure about how to spell a particular word. Make changes when the spell check feature in Microsoft Word and other software applications highlights your errors. After you finish writing a rough draft, read everything you have written once or twice to find and fix errors. It is important to do this because the spell check feature does not highlight every error.

Good grammar is essential. You must follow the rules for proper punctuation. Good punctuation involves using capitalization, periods, commas, quotation marks and other things pertaining to grammar in the right way.

Capitalize the names of places and living things. For example, the correct spelling for "john doe" is John Doe. A proper noun such as "John" requires the first letter to be capitalized. The first letter of the first word in each sentence must be capitalized. Each sentence must end with a period.

Any sentence you quote should be surrounded by quotation marks. A comma must come before the quote and you must insert a period before the second set of punctuation marks. Here is an example: My friend told me, "Todd, you must work harder."

Do you want to learn another way to quote a sentence? Let's use this example: "Todd, you must work harder," my friend told me.

There are times when a period should come after the punctuation marks. Here is an example: If you want to share your personal life online, you can create a "blog".

Use commas to separate three or more items. Here is an example: Todd has an apple, orange, banana and tomato.

It is also important to know how to use semicolons. Here is an example: I want to get a raise; therefore, I must help improve my company's bottom line.

A sentence that is posed as a question must end with a question mark. For example, if you want the opinion of someone you are talking with online, you should write: What do you think?

Insert an apostrophe between a pronoun and a verb such as "is". Here is an example: Todd's doing his job.

Use a hyphen to separate two words that combine to form an adjective. Follow this example: A friendship is a two-way street.

Good structure is important. Avoid writing paragraphs that contain more than five sentences.

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Writing tips: The making of a great feature article?
We want to hear your view. Write now!