𝟏𝟔 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐍 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 (𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟏)

Some people are born writers, when they write, they do not need to think about the sentence structure.
Although they do edit their work, but generally the editing part does not take too much of their time.
Some are like me, however. I am not a naturally good writer. I had to acquire the skills over a period
of time and then I constantly practiced those skills.
If you also find yourself to be like me, you do not need to be worried since the majority of the writers
fall within the latter category. They acquire the writing skills and then practice it a lot.
How to make your Writing effective.
In today’s post, I am going to give you some tips and techniques on how to make your writing more
emphatic, effective, and profound.
Have you ever seen someone write smooth and beautiful paragraphs? I sure have. I used to wonder
how they do it.
Better writing skills do not mean difficult vocabulary and overly complex sentences. Instead, if you
want to make your writing look better, keep it simple.
You must understand the structure of your write up. You should be aware of the concepts such as
unity of ideas, order and coherence.
Only then should you work towards parallelism, use of loose and periodic sentences, etc.
We will cover these and many other things here but keep in mind that writing skills cannot be
perfected overnight. To do this, one has to practice a lot.
A. What are the first steps at writing better?
The first step to write better paragraphs is to understand the basic elements such as Unity of ideas,
order of the ideas, coherence, conciseness and completeness.
I have already covered this in my previous post on five elements of paragraph writing. Take a peek at
that on my Facebook Page (Kashif’s CSS Blogs).
Link: https://www.facebook.com/kashifcssblog/posts/112462687241693
𝐁. 𝟏𝟔 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧
𝟏. 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞
I have seen many aspirants of competitive exams to be very poor at grammar and yet they start
directly with learning how to write essay.
Therefore, the first thing for you would be to strengthen your grammar side.
I am not asking you to go into the details, just stick to 12 tenses, active voice and passive voice and a
few modal verbs would be enough. But, do it today. Before jumping to essays, you should first correct
your grammar.
𝟐. 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦
The sentences are said to have parallel structure if they follow the same grammatical structure within
the same sentence.
Look at this example for instance:
i. I love watching sports, playing piano and to read books.
Now if you look at the third clause i.e. ‘to read books’, it does not share the structure with ‘watching
sports, playing piano’. In order to rectify this, it should either be ‘reading books’ or it should be ‘I
love to watch sports, play piano and read books.’
Similarly, if one clause of the sentence has passive voice, the other should also be a passive voice. If
one of them is active, the other should also be active. For example
i. The professor was admired by his colleagues and the students also liked him.
This should be re-written to maintain parallelism as:
‘The professor’s colleagues admired him, and the students also liked him’
Or
‘The professor was admired by the colleagues and also liked by the students.’
𝟑. 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
Normally we write loose sentences in the paragraphs. But if you want to put special emphasis on a
paragraph, try periodic sentences.
Periodic sentences are those sentences which have the subclause in front. It creates a semblance of
suspense within the sentence.
Let me give you an example of both the sentences here.
Loose sentence: She got the top position in the company despite a slanderous campaign, fierce
opposition and non-cooperative boss.
Periodic sentence: Despite a slanderous campaign, fierce opposition and non-cooperative boss, she
got the top position in the company.
In the second sentence, the main clause or the predicate is at the end. This gives the sentence more
weight and suspense.
𝟒. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬:
Writing short sentences is an extremely powerful technique. Most people write long sentences which
makes it hard for the readers to understand the core idea.
What you should do is to keep a strict between the two. 7 out of 10 sentences should be short, whereas
only 3 can be long sentences.
If you are in the habit of writing long sentences, you should break them up into two or three
depending on its length. Try it and you will see a lot of improvement.
𝟓. 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞:
I have often noticed that some candidates are in the habit of writing sentences in passive voice more
than they write in active voice. Avoid that.
Keep your sentences in active voice. Again, keep the ratio to 7:3.
Passive voice not only elongates the sentences and use up space and energy, it also does not convey
the idea in active and direct form and thus, sometimes fails to engage the reader.
We often make passives where they should not be.
For instance, John eats an apple. An apple is being eaten by John. I have never heard any native
speaker being so helpless before an apple.
𝟔. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐲
Many aspirants are obsessed with vocabulary. They keep on memorizing difficult words. Avoid
writing sentences like this:
Some homo sapiens have the obnoxious habit of putting up a proposition and thereby transmitting the
scheme by resorting to the flummoxing usage of ornate and embellished lexicon.
This could be written as:
Some people are verbose.
𝟕. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐲:
Redundancy is when you use some expressions which are not required.
For example, she returned back from college. In this sentence, the word back is redundant since return
already conveys the meaning of being back.
Let us look at another example:
He quickly ran from the office.
Here the word quickly is redundant since running conveys the idea of being quick.
There are many other expressions like this. I woke up at 6.00 am in the morning. AM already has the
meaning of morning in it.
(𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝟐)
This post is part 2 of the earlier blog post. I have given the link to the previous blog post at the end of
this post.
It would be a good idea to start with the previous post first.
However, for those who have already read the post, they may continue from here.
So without further ado, let’s start with number 08.
𝟖. 𝐁𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞:
While writing a paragraph, keep in mind that you have a maximum of 8 sentences. Do not go beyond
that. It is a red line for you.
You have to say everything you want to contain in a paragraph in those eight sentences. Therefore,
limit yourself to the topic.
Do not write irrelevant stuff. I have seen aspirant starting their essay with very general introductions,
starting from a historical background. Do not do that, please.
Keep yourself specific to one idea, one topic, one theme, and one subject.
𝟗. 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟
Repeating oneself only shows the weakness of idea or the lack of ideas.
Instead of repeating things and using sentences like ‘in other words’, or ‘in simple terms’ or ‘to say
that’, state the original idea succinctly and move on to its explanation, evidence and conclusion.
I will cover “the structure of a paragraph” in the next few days.
𝟏𝟎. 𝐃𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫/𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞.
Some people underwrite, i.e. they write too few sentences in a paragraph.
When you write a few sentences, it means you do not have the idea, or you cannot adequately explain
it. You might not have the evidence to support it. Or there can be any other reason.
Similarly, if you over write, you add up irrelevant things, aimlessly elongate the sentences. It might
also leave the impression that you are writing to fill up the pages.
Therefore, keep yourself limited to 6 to 8 sentences.
You might have noticed that I am writing only a maximum of two sentences in a paragraph, but at the
same time, I am asking you to write 6 to 8 sentences per paragraph.
Well, it’s because writing for digital and social media is entirely different than writing an essay for
CSS/PCS.

𝟏𝟏. 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐬

Most students do not even proof-read their write-ups and put it up to the checker for assessment. This
haste reflects as a bad habit.
I did not proof-read the previous post and hence committed a minor mistake which was later on
pointed out by an aspirant.
When you write, always check and edit before giving it for assessment.
Editing makes you improve your writing a lot. I haven’t learnt more from writing than from editing
my write-ups.
Do not edit then and there, take your time. I write one day and publish on the other day. This one-day
gap frees my mind from any biases I might have for my write up.
While editing, look at what difficult words you can avoid, where you need to put some robust but
appropriate synonym, what are the places where you should not put the passive voice et cetera. Then
change your write up accordingly. Match the two drafts, and you will notice a lot of difference.

𝟏𝟐. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐔𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬

Fillers are the words which we use in order to increase the length of the sentence. Try to avoid such
fillers to bring clarity to writing.
In the first sentence under this section, ‘in order to’ is the filler. If I write ‘to increase’ instead of “in
order to increase’, it would still be correct and more precise.
There is a long list of such words such as in order to, that, so, basically, with regard to, with reference
to (both of these words can be replaced by about, concerning, regarding), just, very, really, highly,
needless to say, in my humble opinion, there is no denying the fact, for all intents and purposes etc.
𝟏𝟑. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲
I wouldn’t say much about this as I have already said enough. Write at least one page every day.
Make it a habit.
Do this first thing in the morning and thank me after a month.
𝟏𝟒. 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞:
Before writing down everything, think it through. Make a rough outline of what you are going to
write. Outlining your thought will give you clarity, purpose and organization.
For a detailed discussion on this, visit my blog post on ‘5 Most Common Mistake Almost Every CSS
Aspirant Commits”. Check it out on my Facebook Page Blogpost.
Link: https://www.facebook.com/kashifcssblog/posts/110764110744884
𝟏𝟓. 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.
I have already covered this topic in the above post.
𝟏𝟔. 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞:
Whenever you write, do not just keep it sitting on your table. Get it checked by some teacher, or
preferably someone who has already passed this examination.
Sometimes, they might not check your work; sometimes, they might not be available. Nevertheless,
keep on writing. Get a friend of yours to check.
Remember, the one thing that we do best is criticism. Therefore, anyone can check your work and
give you some useful suggestions. Take the criticism with a positive attitude. It doesn’t matter if the
criticism is genuine or not. If you want to grow, learn to accept the grilling.

🅐 🅢🅗🅞🅡🅣 🅡🅔-🅒🅐🅟:

1. Cover your grammar side

2. Parallelism
3. Loose and Periodic Sentence
4. Range of vocabulary
5. Avoid verbosity
6. Use Active Voice more
7. Avoid using fillers
8. Be specific when you write
9. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short
10. Never repeat yourself
11. Do not over/under-write.
12. Keep editing your drafts
13. Write regularly
14. Make an outline
15. Research before writing
16. Get your write-ups checked