1. Write in the active voice.  Prefer active sentences over passive ones whenever putting the focus on the object of the action isn’t necessary.  Passive sentences are simply more prone to faults in grammar than active forms.
2. Omit unnecessary adjectives.  While adjectives can add depth to your writing, they’re very prone to overuse.    Watch out for instances of multiple adjectives and make sure they don’t just parrot each other’s meaning.  Similarly, if a noun or pronoun already bears a specific quality, there’s no point in using an adjective to express the same thing.
3. Omit unnecessary adverbs.   Just like adjectives, adverbs are used to modify meaning.  Instead of nouns or pronouns, though, they alter the meaning of verbs, adjectives, adverbs and entire sentence clauses.    Similar to adjectives, they are very prone to overuse, so watch out for successive adverbs in your writing.
4. Ensure noun pronoun agreement.  Pronouns allow you to avoid needless repetition of nouns.  However, make sure that all your nouns and pronouns line up logically — that is, the reader can clearly identify which noun every pronoun refers to.
5. Use a grammar software.   Put simply, running a grammar software is the fastest way to rid your writing of careless mechanical, spelling and grammar errors.  If you write with any frequency, there’s no reason for you not to be using one.

Instead of taking a grammar course, just buy an English grammar software.  Use it for everything you write, pay attention to its corrections and it will be like taking a course already — only, without a classroom and a teacher spouting concepts.  It’s a practical and hands-on type of learning, which, in my opinion, is a lot better if you’re looking to make strides in your writing.

What areas of writing should you then study?   Rather than grammar, I recommend taking specialized writing courses for the specific skills you want to develop.  If you’re hoping to write better for school, then a class on writing persuasive essays should serve you well;  if you have aspirations of becoming a novelist, then using that time to enroll in fiction writing will probably be more appropriate.

Grammar correction can be automated, while the rest of your writing skills can not.  As such, it will probably serve you more to focus on the latter when looking to mold yourself into a better writer.

No matter where you limitations currently lie, a program like this can do plenty to bring your writing to a much-improved quality.    Aside from fixing grammar and spelling, after all, it can suggest changes on numerous parts of your prose, helping solve problems in sentence structures, word use and style.

With a check grammar software, those limitations won’t magically disappear.  They are gaps in your skill set, after all — only the act of going to work on each one will actually allow you to get past them.  That’s a process that could take years, depending on how much time you have to devote to the necessary tasks.

Instead, what a check grammar software will do is allow you to write like none of those limitations exist.  How?  By fixing up your writing such that it reads adequately polished and given plenty of post-draft attention.



While I’ve seen some grammar games online, I haven’t actually seen one included with an English grammar software.  It’s an understandable omission.  The purpose of grammar software is to check and correct the grammar in people’s writing, rather than teach it, after all.

If you’re looking to improve your own grammar skills, repeated use of a grammar software can actually help.  Regular encounters with fixes and corrections of your own writing should help you internalize many grammar concepts that can improve your stock of language abilities.

In case you’re looking for a way to make that same learning fun, though, grammar games might be a more interesting option.  For that, I highly recommend searching online — I’ve seen plenty of such games available, both for download and online play.

Another thing you can do is design your own grammar games with friends using your grammar software as a reference.  Make sure you do it with a buddy, though, so you can trade puzzles with each other (there’s no point solving games you made yourself — you already know the answers).

While not exactly intended for learning English writing, tools like grammar checkers and style correctors are among the best ones available for helping build up your writing skills.  In fact, I actually credit them for a huge part of how I developed my writing abilities from utterly horrid to pleasantly serviceable.

When using software like these to learn English writing, it’s comparable to learning to bike by actually riding a bike, instead of getting instructions.  You learn by actively participating, encountering the concepts first-hand and making the connections yourself, rather than memorizing theoretical information as you would often do with a book.

The more you use your English grammar software to polish and correct your writing, the more times you’ll encounter the errors that frequently find their way into your work, the fixes that correct them and the various types of improvement suggestions that can give your writing a much-needed polish.  Learning becomes a natural by-product of just going about your regular duties, which makes the whole process even better.

How do you solve this?  Using a grammar check program is one way.  When you run your writing through a software like that, it can find and offer corrections to many basic and advanced grammar problems in your work.  Even though you may lack the actual skills to write clearly and concisely, having that in your arsenal of tools allows you to turn up finished pieces that manage to communicate effectively anyway.

Rather than relying completely on your grammar check program to save the day, though, we highly recommend working on your actual grammar skills.  That means, taking a class or picking up a book on grammar fundamentals, then doing the work required.

While a good grammar check program can mask your lack of skills, steadily improving your grammar will allow you to express yourself more freely.   For many people, this means being able to write drafts in a far smoother manner than the struggle that they’re used to.  It can also be helpful in situations where your writing software may not be available, such as when you’re asked to write an impromptu essay for a job application or something similar.

Like we said: brush up on the basics and you will likely solve many of your writing woes.   And while you’re improving, rely on your grammar check software to help you along the way.

No one expects a second-language speaker to write with impeccable English, whether you’re composing essays for school or churning out reports for your new supervisor.  Regardless, that’s not an excuse to turn in documents filled with writing mistakes of all shapes, sizes and religious domination (just kidding on the last one).

Just because people have a low opinion of your English writing abilities (since you’re an ESL speaker), it doesn’t give you the license to satisfy their uninspired expectations.  Truth is, you can do so much better if you’d just invest in an affordable writing software.

Not only can writing programs fix spelling and grammar errors, more advanced ones can effectively streamline your writing, too.   If you want to be a more effective communicator even while you’re still building your stock of English knowledge, we can’t imagine a more helpful solution to tide you over.

Additionally, writing software is an excellent tool for improving your own English facility.    After you see the same mistakes fixed and corrected, the right usage tends to stick, eventually manifesting themselves in future documents that you sit down to compose.

The way you spell?  It counts.  How correct your grammar is?  It counts.  Your use of punctuations?  They count.  Same as the words you choose, the adjectives you insert and every other small facet of your craft.  They all matter.

How can you ever have the time to take care of all the details?  Chances are, you won’t.  That’s why we encourage anyone who does a regular amount of writing to invest in a writing grammar software.

With a writing program, you don’t have to examine your writing with the precision of a microscope.  Sure, reading through your draft and making sure things read fine will be necessary, but you can leave a lot of the surface details to your writing program.

Your spelling?  Let the writing software fix it.  Your grammar?  Have the correction software for writing have a go and let it suggest ways to fix your mistakes.  Same goes for every mechanical and grammar-related detail in your work, all of which a qualified writing program should be able to work its automatic magic on.



Here are a few guidelines about making shifts in tense, mood or voice.

1. Shifting tenses.  Unless it is required by the events you’re telling in the piece, you should never shift between past, present and future tenses.    If you catch such a shift in your writing, check if there is a way to maintain the same tense and still communicate the same idea.
2. Shifting moods.  Mood will depend on the verb form chosen, expressing either statements, commands or a hypothetical condition.  When you switch from one mood to another within succeeding sentences, the change tends to feel abrupt, often taking the readers of out their element and destroying your writing’s flow.  When you notice such a shift, try and rewrite one sentence to use the same mood, checking to see if it works better than the original.
3. Shifting voices.  Avoid shifting between active and passive right in the same sentence.  Mistakes like these often happen when combining two thoughts within a sentence and it ends up making the whole passage sound awkward.



Problem is, some of those may not be appropriate for the way you write.  For instance, some grammar programs can have a hard time checking longer sentences.  Complex constructions can appear to break some grammar rules, at first glance, and your software will flag that.   If you want it to skip longer sentences, though, since you check those manually during editing, you can turn the feature off, so it doesn’t become a nuisance while you get the software to proofread the rest of your work.

Another instance may be when you’re writing a technical document and need to use certain words repeatedly.  Since many English writing software will check for repeated occurrences of the same word and flag it as wordiness, you can turn the feature off, so it doesn’t end up slowing you down.

There are many ways, such as these, to personalize the way your language software works.  If you want to streamline how it assists in your writing process, then it makes sense to regularly enable and disable certain features, so that you’re only using the ones you need at any time.