50 tips on how to write good
According to a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology , the answer is no. In fact, complex writing makes you sound small-minded. Just consider the title of the study: Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly. To sound smart, you must stop trying to sound smart.
50 Tips on How to Write Good
Whether you've never written an SAT Essay or didn't get the score you wanted on your last test, you can benefit from knowing more: both about the essay itself, and what really matters when the graders are reading your essay.
To introduce you to what you'll have to do, we've gathered up these 15 tips to master the SAT essay. The SAT Essay is a very short assignment. Writing an SAT essay requires a very specific approach that's unlike the essays you've been writing for English class in school. The goal of this strategy is to cram in as many as possible of the desired components in the 50 minutes you've got. In this article, we give you 15 key tips for the SAT essay. The first five tips in this article relate to what the College Board tells us about what's a good essay.
Here they are, condensed:. What this means is that your essay needs to make a clear argument that the reader can easily identify. I've bolded the claim in this fake sample prompt so you can see this for yourself:.
Write an essay in which you explain how Sam Lindsay builds an argument to persuade her audience that more works of art should feature monsters. In your essay, analyze how Lindsay uses one or more of the features listed in the box above or features of your own choice to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of her argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage.
Now, here's an example of a thesis statement for an essay responding to this prompt:. The SAT essay rubric states: "The response includes a skillful introduction and conclusion. Including an introduction paragraph in your essay is absolutely essential to getting a Writing score above a 4 out of 8. Plus, an introduction can be a pretty good indicator of the quality for the rest of the essay—a poorly constructed introduction is often a warning that the essay that follows will be equally discombobulated.
The main reason for this is that a good introduction includes your thesis statement. There are a couple of parts of the Writing score section on the SAT essay rubric that pertain directly to style. The SAT essay rubric states this about a perfect-Writing-score essay: "The response is cohesive and demonstrates a highly effective use and command of language.
For most of us, "command of language" is an area that takes a long time to develop, so unless your language skills are really rough or you're prepping at least a year ahead of time or both , you'll probably get more out of focusing on the other components of the essay.
The response demonstrates a consistent use of precise word choice. The response maintains a formal style and objective tone.
This basically boils down to: don't be repetitive and don't make grammar mistakes. In addition, you should avoid using first person statements like "I" or "My" in the essay, along with any other informality.
You're writing the equivalent of a school paper, not an opinion piece. Finally, try to use different words to describe the same idea—don't use "shows" 15 times. Take the chance to show off your vocabulary if, and only if , the vocabulary is appropriate and makes sense.
This component is the biggest reason why revising your SAT Essay is essential—it's fast and easy to change repeated words to other ones after you're finished, but it can slow you down during writing to worry about your word choice. If you're aiming for a top score, using advanced vocabulary appropriately is vital. In real life, there are many ways to support a thesis, depending on the topic. We'll show you more below. In fact, your essay will be more coherent and more likely to score higher in Analysis if you focus your discussion on just a few points.
It's more important to show that you're able to pick out the most important parts of the argument and explain their function that it is to be able to identify every single persuasive device the author used. Think about it as if you were asked to write a minute essay describing the human face and what each part does. A clear essay would just focus on major features—eyes, nose, and mouth. A less effective essay might also try to discuss cheekbones, eyebrows, eyelashes, skin pores, chin clefts, and dimples as well.
While all of these things are part of the face, it would be hard to get into detail about each of the parts in just 50 minutes. And this is the eye, and this is the other eye, and this is the Even though the SAT essay has clearly stated, publicly-available guidelines, there are a few secrets to writing the essay that most students don't know and that can give you a major advantage on the test.
A big part of the Analysis score for the SAT essay is not just identifying the devices the author uses to build her argument, but explaining the effect that the use of these devices has on the reader. Here's an example of an interpretation about what effect a persuasive device has on the reader backed by evidence from the passage :.
Lindsay appeals to the emotions of her readers by describing the forlorn, many-eyed creatures that stare reproachfully at her from old school notebook margins. Now, you don't necessarily know for sure if "sympathy for the doodles" is what the author was going for in her passage. The SAT essay graders probably don't know either unless one of them wrote the passage. But as long as you can make a solid case for your interpretation, using facts and quotes from the passage to back it up , you'll be good.
Overall, this response demonstrates inadequate writing. Being able to stay detached while reading the passage you'll be writing the essay about can be tricky. This task might be especially difficult for students who were used to the old SAT essay which pretty much made it mandatory for you to choose one side or the other.
A good way to practice this is to read news articles on topics you care deeply about by people who hold the opposite view that you do. I would then work on my objectivity by jotting down the central ideas, most important details, and how these details relate to the central ideas of the article. Being able to understand the central ideas in the passage and details without being sidetracked by rage or other emotions is key to writing an effective SAT essay.
Used with permission. Don't let the monster of rage distract you from your purpose. To do this successfully, you'll need to be aware of some of the techniques that are frequently used to build arguments.
However, it's way easier to go into the essay knowing certain techniques that you can then scan the passage for. For instance, after noting the central ideas and important details in the article about how more works of art should feature monsters, I would then work on analyzing the way the author built her argument. Does she use statistics in the article? Personal anecdotes? Appeal to emotion? When you write an SAT essay, you only have 50 minutes to read, analyze, and write an essay, which means that you need a game plan going in.
Here's a short step-by-step guide on how to write an effective SAT essay. College Board makes a point of specifying this very point in its grading rubric as well—an essay that scores a 2 out of 4 or below in Analysis " merely asserts, rather than explains [the persuasive devices'] importance. The best way to get a high Reading score for your essay is to quote from the passage appropriately to support your points. If you are explaining the author's argument in your own words, however, you need to be extra careful to make sure that the facts you're stating are accurate —in contrast to scoring on the old SAT essay, scoring on the new SAT essay takes into account factual inaccuracies and penalizes you for them.
The main point to take away from this is that you should follow the standard structure for an SAT essay introduction-body-body-conclusion. Using a basic four- to five-paragraph essay structure will both keep you organized and make it easier for the essay graders to follow your reasoning—a win-win situation!
Furthermore, you should connect each paragraph to each other through effective transitions. We'll give you ways to improve your performance in this area in the articles linked at the end of this article. For a breakdown of how much time to spend on each of these steps, be sure to check out our article on how to write an SAT essay, step-by-step.
It's especially important to practice the analysis and writing components of the essay if you are a slow reader since reading speed can be difficult to change. Being able to analyze and write quickly can help balance out the extra time you take to read and comprehend the material. Plus, the time you put into working on analysis and writing will yield greater rewards than time spent trying to increase your reading speed.
This is just the beginning of improving your SAT essay score. Next, you actually need to put this into practice with a real SAT essay. Looking to get even deeper into the essay prompt? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by SAT experts.
If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. How to Get a Perfect , by a Perfect Scorer. Score on SAT Math. Score on SAT Reading. Score on SAT Writing.
What ACT target score should you be aiming for? How to Get a Perfect 4. How to Write an Amazing College Essay. A Comprehensive Guide. Choose Your Test. I've bolded the claim in this fake sample prompt so you can see this for yourself: Write an essay in which you explain how Sam Lindsay builds an argument to persuade her audience that more works of art should feature monsters.
As you read the passage below, consider how Lindsay uses evidence, such as facts or examples , to support claims. Want to improve your SAT score by points? Try it risk-free today:. Laura Staffaroni. About the Author. Ask a Question Below Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!
Always pick on the correct idiom. Always be sure to finish what.
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Whether you've never written an SAT Essay or didn't get the score you wanted on your last test, you can benefit from knowing more: both about the essay itself, and what really matters when the graders are reading your essay. To introduce you to what you'll have to do, we've gathered up these 15 tips to master the SAT essay.
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Learning a Lesson from “50 Tips on How to Write Good”
The contents of this post are an alphabetical arrangement of two lists that have been circulating among writers and editors for many years. A writer must not shift your point of view. Always pick on the correct idiom. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. Always be sure to finish what 5.
50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills
In the introductory paragraph, I clearly stated that it was a mash-up of two similar — and, to many people, familiar — packages of pronouncements that illustrate the writing errors or are they? If you experienced this exercise, do you recall how you giggled while you sat there after writing your name and putting your pencil down, smugly watching your classmates pat their heads while rubbing their stomachs, then hoot like an owl three times, and follow whatever other goofy instructions preceded the injunction to ignore all preceding items? Some items simply illustrate, through deliberate error, the peril of ignoring the admonition within. But what was the alternative? The lesson for me is to write what comes naturally — but to realize that, although I have a role in, and some responsibility for, how my writing is received, it is ultimately the individual reader who determines the success or failure of that writing. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! I remember one of those tests. I suspect or hope? Context is everything.
With so much content being published online every day, it is harder than ever to capture the attention of online readers. You must be able to produce relevant, interesting copy that can be easily read—or more likely, skimmed.
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SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips
Want more email subscribers? Contest entries? Almost all of your campaigns and content should have a well-crafted call to action designed to drive action. The calls to action that we use can determine whether or not people do, in fact, take action, along with how many. So what is a call to action? Subscribe now so you never a post! They put a ton of time, energy, and money into the creation of their ad, social media, blogging and email campaigns then slap a half-hearted call to action on the end of it. And they fail. There are two main purposes of a call to action: to tell someone what they should do, and give them the motivation to do so. It means exactly that: concise. Sometimes the best way to get really good at something like writing a killer call to action is to learn from others. It has more than its share of CTAs examples to inspire you. Their call to action is clear. Learn more about this here.
Follow the Author
Important message to convey? Read your work to a colleague then ask them to repeat its main point. For an instant idea of how readable your writing is, use the Gunning Fog Index. Counterintuitive, but true! Writing quotes for someone else but struggling to capture their voice? Get out that Dictaphone! Is your writing flabby or fit?
