Writing is one of the most crucial assignments you will always have to face throughout your college life. But excelling in your writing assignment requires you to perfect your writing skills so that you can attain to greater levels of perfection. This post will discuss tips that will enable you to sharpen and perfect your writing skills.

Never rush through things

One of the best ways of securing excellence in your writing skills is learning how to take your time with your assignment without rushing. First, you need to sit down and plan your assignments based on the number of days the instructor has given you. The reason here is that most students usually assume that they have too much time and hence they will just wake up one of these “fine days” and finish everything. The problem is that when their so-called fine days arrive, they end up getting distracted with other things and suddenly, a strangulating deadline begins hanging over their heads. The result of such an assumption is that they begin the rush and end up writing all the wrong things.

So, to keep yourself safe from choking deadlines, you should always consider every deadline your lecturers give you as being enough to do your work well. You need to start planning for your assignment the same day you receive it and break it into manageable pieces so that you never need to do too much at a time.

Be more qualitative than quantitative

Another way of enhancing your game in your writing assignments, you should pay attention to the quality of your writing. You do not need to focus too much on the number of words you are writing, but rather, on the amount of quality you have invested in each word and sentence you write. Do not just rush to beat the word count; make sure that you write to give your readers value for their time.

It is fine to ask for help

Perfecting your writing skills is one thing, while outgrowing help is another reality altogether. According to yourwriters.net, when we talk of perfecting your skills, you need to put it into the right context so that you don’t approach it with a fallacious and fictitious “self-made” delusion. The truth is that there is no such a thing as a “self-made” success in this life. If you do not appreciate the power of other people’s help, then you are heading into a ditch. That is why to attain perfection, you need to ask for help whenever you need it. Do not feel embarrassed to ask for help from your tutors because they are on their payroll to help you to attain that perfection. If you feel that it demeans you to ask for help whenever you don’t understand something, then you are in the wrong place. So, be wise and real enough to stand on your instructors’ shoulders to see farther.

Perfect your proofreading skills

To attain perfection in your writing skills, you need to pay particular attention to the process of proofreading. The reason is that proofreading is the last stage of perfecting your assignments after writing and editing. It gives you the opportunity to capture the errors you had not seen in the original draft, and new ones that could have sneaked in while you were editing the first draft.

Follow instructions wisely

You want to improve your college writing skills, you need to pay attention to how you follow instructions. Before you proceed and do anything else, you need to understand what your assignment’s directions require you to do. You should carefully read and interpret your prompts so that you can confine yourself to the purpose of your assignment. You should also remain within the defined word count of your assignment so that you don’t digress into trivia. Lastly, make sure that you write your assignments as per the stipulated style and format.

Outgrow your spell and grammar checkers

Well, this point may sound contradictory because most of us were taught that the spelling and grammar checkers in the market are the best tools for tracking down errors in your writing assignments. However, that statement is partially true, and if you are patient enough, you will understand why. With most people using Microsoft’s Office to do their writing, and then transfer their work to Grammarly, they assume that these two programs are the ultimate measure of grammar perfection. But the truth is that they are just a small fraction of editing your work, including, finding spelling and grammar errors.

With American English being falsely flaunted as the “best English,” most naïve, and especially non-native writers, buy into everything as long as it is “American.” What such people forget is that English is not an American, but a European language spoken and indigenized in North America. With the erosion of standards, it is sad to note that the same grammar trash you see in most American writings has finally found itself into Microsoft’s Word editor and Grammarly. Additionally, you will be sabotaging your own writing by blindly following the so-called “advanced suggestions” of these two programs. For instance, Grammarly may highlight one word or phrase as a “critical or advanced grammar issue” while Word approves it and vice versa.

Look at these misleading examples within Grammarly and Microsoft’s shoddy Word editor.

Your name- it underlines and “suggests” you change it to “you’re” name

It’s fine- it underlines and “suggests” you change it to “its” fine

These are just some of the many serious mistakes besides weird suggestions for misplaced commas, unnecessary articles, irrelevant semicolons, and questionable question marks. With all this in focus, you need to use these spelling and grammar checkers as secondary tools hence your mastery of grammar and your eye should be the final and primary tools for editing and proofreading your work.

Use a neutral language

Another way of perfecting your college writing skills is differentiating between writing a compelling academic copy and a sales copy. Many students easily fall into this trap by going overboard in the process of trying to convince their audience. They use superlative language to describe issues especially when they have a strong bias for or against a particular topic at hand. You need to avoid all forms of superlative descriptions so that you don’t make your audience feel suspicious. Also, using absolute terms can make your audience antagonistic towards your message because they will feel you are imposing your sentiments and preferences on them.

Flee plagiarism

You cannot improve your writing skills unless you know how to beat plagiarism. As a college student who wants to excel in their assignments, you need to learn how to use other people’s works sparingly, and when you cite them, give them the due credit they deserve. You need to avoid plagiarism in its intentional and accidental forms. If you want to avoid accidental plagiarism, you need to master the art of paraphrasing and rewriting so that your work does not appear to be a copied and pasted piece of information.