How To Write With Flair

5295817405_c5ff058f5e_z.jpg                                                             Image Source: Flickr. Let It Snow…typefaces. tsevis.

Heather Holleman, Ph.D, is a successful author, blogger and Penn
State writing instructor.  Here is what she says is the key to
successful writing – writing with flair. 

Five Ways to Write with Flair

By Heather Holleman, Ph.D.

 

Most of us will have thousands
of occasions for writing in the next year: emails, text messages,
resumes, blog entries, cover letters, articles, love letters, essays,
reports, memos, or our next big novel. How do we make our writing
interesting to our audience? With flair!

It’s easy. I know 5 tricks. Ready?

1. Choose a verb with flair.
Eliminate feeble verbs (am, is, are, was, were, has, have, had, seems,
appear, exists). These verbs don’t show anything happening. Use exciting
verbs. I love verbs like grapple and fritter. Grapple with strong verbs to fritter away the feeble ones.

2. Toggle between the Big 5 punctuation marks: When you want to create complexity and voice in your writing, try using the Big 5: semicolon, colon, dash, parentheses, comma.

 

Here’s how:

 

  • To highlight a part of your sentence–like this one–use dashes. Dashes shout. On the other hand, if you want to whisper and share a secret with an audience (like this one), use parentheses. Parentheses whisper.

 

  • Semicolons confuse most; they unite full sentences that belong together because the second sentence explains or amplifies the first.

 

  • Commas
    help the reader along by following introductory clauses, or they
    combine two sentences when you want to use a conjunction like and, but,
    for, or, nor, so (commas can be really hard unless you had grammar
    instruction as a kid).

 

  • Finally, the colon designates that a list or definition will follow. So the Big 5 include: semicolon, colon, dash, parentheses, comma.

 

Do you feel smart?

3. Vary the length of your sentences and change the way they start to create rhythm. See sample paragraph above.

4. Garnish your paragraph with some clever wordplay if you can.
Common cleverness in writing includes: puns, repeated first words,
self-answering questions, understatement, just being funny, just being
YOU. However, avoid overused expressions and clichés.

5. Engage your audience.
Establish rapport by talking to them. Are you wondering how this works?
Just notice them in your writing (like I just did). Make it obvious
that you are talking to people.

Try these simple things to create some flair in your writing today. Enjoy some written flair.


One thought on “How To Write With Flair

  1. Joseph Mennuti

    I have a hard time with punctuation around quotation marks because I have seen periods go both inside and outside of them. I now know why: in American grammar, the period goes inside of the quotation marks and in English grammar, the period goes outside of the quotation marks. Thank you to this website for explaining this information and much more:
    http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.htm
    Personally, I prefer the English way because it seems more natural and more logical (and because I think I always make that “mistake” when I write).

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