Before reading, make sure your read my previous one on: Writing - The Why And The Essence
What Is Meant By “Writing Good English” ?
The meaning of ‘good english‘, and hence writing good english, may vary from people to people around the world since we come from different backgrounds and due to the nature of our education. Despite the fact that there is no governing bodies of linguists to gauge its exact meaning, we do have a standard set by the authorities indulged in linguistics. Hence, sensible authors, careful writers and educated people using english language as their medium of writing, try to conform to these standards as closely as they can. These standards may be grammatical rules, language structure, and universally accepted words, idioms or metaphors.
English Language, IMHO The Best
There are so many languages nowadays which can be used, but the english language is the most widely used world-wide. In my humble opinion, english language includes and transcends all subjects. It is for english writers and lovers a whole means of expression, the attainment of which makes them articulate and intelligible human beings, able to inherit the past, to possess the present and to confront the future. The ability to write good english is simply an art for them.
My Own Experience With Writing - Good English A Myth?
I was not so fluent or good at writing english in my early days of school. I was always favoring French, the second official language of my country - Mauritius. There were some personal reasons which I will not elaborate right now to keep on the subject title. But one main reason was that I was always scoring an ‘A’ in all my french classes despite the fact that I was never doing any french essays or practicing it. This fact was initially a mystery to me because I was always trying my best to write good english and was never successful in getting good results. Then, I finally remembered that I was frequently reading some 1 or 2 pages of french books every day. Yeah I mean it, I loved the famous french book - ‘Les Six Compagnons de la Croix Rousse, by Jean Jacques Bonzo’ and this made reading french more than a hobby. I was reading in my free periods, sometimes during recess, in the bus and at night just to finish all its series. Like this, my hunger for french adventure books became a craze. But in this process, I was unaware that while reading so much, french words seemed to have become hackneyed phrases. That is why my friends used to tell me: “man, where do you fetch all these nice french wordings?”. In other words, what I want to emphasize here is that if you keep reading and looking at english/french words or a small sentence everyday for at least some 30 minutes per day, you will end up with these words embedded in your mind without knowing. And when you will start to write english, you will be amazed to see your mind popping out nice words; that’s how you will progress to write good english!
The Secret Of Writing Good English
While reading you should build up a personal ‘database‘ of special words or phrases. Get a small copy book and list down all striking and unknown words to you. Therefore, be regular in breeding a medley of nice words in your special ‘note-book‘. Those precious words are your key to write good english.
Now, does this mean that you should read everyday? Not really, but you should definetly read your smorgasbord of words in your note-book everyday! I strongly believe that there are 2 kinds of people - one who read very very often, if not everyday, to master the language (as i did unknowingly for the french language) and the second person who read little, but nurturing a high mastery of the basics and techniques of the english language (this one was my conscious experience with english).
But here, the key tricks are:
1) Each time and every single time you read, you should keep growing your ‘database’ of words. Keep looking for new prominent words.
2) Make the english dictionary be your bosom english friend - never keep a word in your book without finding and writing down it’s meaning. Else, do not bother about even writing it down - trust me!
3) You should pinpoint good critical articles/books, think about what you are reading and in this process be generous to yourself by taking notes conscientiously of new golden words. This is because you are reading rarely and hence you should make those rare readings worth 10 times the ones that you would read everyday. So you have to be very selective and analytical in what you will read.
4) Now that you have a copy-book full of defined words, don’t just sit around and smile at it. Go and put them into practice. Start by writing good sentences with these words and write some essays. Writing here is pivotal. Just like a car cannot run without a battery, you cannot expect to have a fluent english if you do not write english. (the battery being your skill in writing and your car the knowledge of the language and wordings)
Support Your Effort To Write Good English With Observation
Going further in our approach, while reading decent articles, you should see how Mr X is using his words in his articles and how he constructs his sentences. Then, with your analytical and critical reading, coupled with your observation and some personal insights, you should try to emulate the fresh expressiveness of Mr X. How to do this, you say? Go and try to write a good english sentence where you can use those words better than Mr X. You will once again be amazed at yourself at how well you performed and you will even be seeing yourself gaining momentum and hence writing good english paragraphs. Go reward yourself after your hard work, you deserve it!
=> I sincerely hope this article on ‘how to write good english‘ and my effort to explain it to you, has been fruitful for you. If you do like I explain, there is no excuse in not being able to produce good quality english writings. And I wish you all the best
What’s Next Concerning Writing Good?
As I said in my ‘About section’, my aim is to make you say ‘Wondeful‘ by bringing decent piece of work written by me. So, keep supporting Wakish Wonderz and keep being around. My next article is on ‘GP Essays - how to write General Paper essays‘. This is particular targeted to students taking part in HSC Cambridge students as an addition to this article on ‘How to write good english’. But no wonder, all these articles on Writing - The Why And The Essence is a must and worth-while reading for everyone, since learning is an ever on-going process.
Before ending, I will sincerely advise you to buy or get a copy of this book below. This book was prescribed to me by my English/GP Guru and I should say that I salutes my Guru for this book, it’s a treasure to me!(You will indeed come back and thank me for having shown you this book!)
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This article is very interesting…
But there’s something that i did not understand.Which book is the author talking about?
May i know it please?
do let me know about it…
Hi Shakeela,
I’m not understanding what you meant by: “Which book is the author talking about?”
So, I will try to answer you the different ways I’m seeing you question:
1) If you are saying that this article is from the book, then no. This article has been 100% writing by me based from my own personal experience.
2) If you are asking about the book I suggested - the book discuss about a variety of different topics all having and showing “critical analysis”..etc
It has a lot of insights..
If I have wrongly interpreted your question, I apologize. But do feel free to ask me again about it
Ok, thank you wakish!
By the way, you almost replied to my question.
My question was:”CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME THE NAME OF THE BOOK WHICH YOUR GURU HAD RECOMMENDED YOU TO BUY? AND WHERE CAN I HAVE THIS BOOK?”…
thanks for replying…
Hi again Shakeela,
the book can be bought via amazon, I gave the link right up there.. see the little square which have the book above, or use this direct link: Critical Thinking on Amazon
- Wakish -
How to write English
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Don’t use contractions in formal writing, and don’t use no double negatives. It is incumbent on one to avoid archaisms. Proofread carefully to see if you words out or incorect speling. It has come to our considered attention that in a large majority of cases, far too many people use a great deal more words than is absolutely necessary when engaged in the practice of writing sentences. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of redundant repetition can be removed and eliminated by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view. If the writer is considerate of the reader, he won’t have a problem with ambiguous sentences. Don’t write a run-on sentence its hard to read you must punctuate it. If a dependent clause precedes an independent clause put a comma after the dependent clause. But avoid commas, that are not necessary, and don’t overuse exclamation marks!!! Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn’t. Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it when its not needed. In statements involving two word phrases, make an all out effort to use hyphens, but make sure you hyp- henate properly.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Always pick on the correct idiom. Avoid colloquial stuff, and trendy locutions that sound flaky. Also, avoid all awkward or affected alliteration. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. Beware of and eschew pompous prolixity, and avoid the utilization of enlarged words when shortened ones will do. Avoidification of neologisms strengthenifies your prosification. Avoid using sesquipedalian words. It is not resultful to transform one part of speech into another by prefixing, suffixing, or other alterings. Perform a functional iterative analysis on your work to root out third generation transitional buzz words. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck into the language. The de facto use of foreign phrases vis-a-vis plain English in your written tete-a-tetes makes the sentence harder to understand.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Write all adverbial forms correct. Verbs has to agree with their subjects, and the adverb always follows the verb. This sentence no verb. Which is not a complete sentence, but merely a subordinate clause. A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
Last but not least, avoid dyed-in-the-wool cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
hey man hi…. I just wanted to let u know that I am in great need of a guide and I think I found one…i.e. you… I’m from Mauritius like you and please to know that you also hail from there.. where are u right now ? abroad for tertiary studies ? I am not so good in GP especially in the issues relating to GP. Add me on msn (if you want…), we’ll talk there.
See ya soon man. A+
@Cat:
Wow Cat, thanks a lot for the extra effort, simply wonderful of you! Cheers!
@anooj:
Hi anooj, thanks for the kind words. Glad to see another Mauritian around.
Cheers!
Hi, I’m Fab. Well, my problem for English is that I can’t capture words to include in my essays. I think I’ve a bad English to talk with people. Help me by giving to me tips for my shortcomings. Please. So, I’m more frequent on MSN. Don’t hesitate to let me know about my English, I’m complex ed about it. Need your help. Thanks for receiving my views. See ya soon on Msn.