{"id":1705,"date":"2016-02-01T11:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/?p=1705"},"modified":"2016-02-04T16:01:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T22:01:05","slug":"the-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/the-curve\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying ahead of the curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Anna Tarnow<\/p>\n

Bad news: getting better at writing is a lot of work. Good news: anyone can do it!<\/p>\n

Being good (or even excellent) at writing is not some magical skill that some people have and others don\u2019t. Good writing is the product of dedication and energy, just like pretty much every other skill. Some people may seem astronomically better at things, but they just have a lot of cumulative practice, which is something that anyone can have given time. And to me, at least, that\u2019s encouraging! You can<\/em> make serious progress just by working a little each day.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my top strategies for long term improvement:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Give your written work some percolation time (usually around a week, maybe two or three), and then come back to it. Notice odd quirks or repeated mistakes in your writing, make a list of them, and start checking for them every time you write.<\/li>\n
  2. Use ctrl+f or cmd+f to search for words that you overuse. I used to write \u201creally\u201d in every other sentence, but I\u2019ve learned to suppress that urge.<\/li>\n
  3. Focus on structure, especially if you\u2019re fresh out of high school, where structure is usually skimmed over. Each point should lead logically to the next, like a chain of stepping stones.<\/li>\n
  4. Make sure you\u2019re using the right word! People, myself included, will often throw in words that they don\u2019t actually know to make themselves sound smarter. This is a trap because using the wrong word looks worse than using smaller words correctly.<\/li>\n
  5. But do work to expand your vocabulary! There are plenty of apps that can help you do this. I like Magoosh\u2019s products.<\/li>\n
  6. And finally, find something you like to write about. Whether it\u2019s complaining about politics, predicting the outcome of sports, or talking about MAC products, something<\/em> in this world probably gets your gears spinning. So use that, and have fun!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Anna Tarnow is a senior\u00a0majoring in English and enjoys working on the<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Pilot\u00a0<\/em>newspaper, where she is editor-in-chief.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Anna Tarnow Bad news: getting better at writing is a lot of work. Good news: anyone can do it! Being good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,109],"tags":[141,143,127,44],"class_list":["post-1705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-getting-started","category-writeherewritenowwriteon","tag-progress","tag-structure","tag-time-management","tag-writing-process"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-rv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1709,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions\/1709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}