When I was nine, I wrote a short story for my avid reader base … a.k.a. my mom and dad and dog, Maggie. It was about roller coasters and featured my best friend Abby, but that’s about all I remember from my first literary masterpiece.
I’ve always loved writing, and I’m so grateful that I get to write every single day (albeit about marketing and not theme parks). I mean, I get paid to do this. How cool is that?
But just because I landed my dream job doesn’t mean I’ve stopped improving my writing. In fact, I feel more motivated than ever to discover new habits and master new writing skills.
Writing is an integral part of life. Regardless of what your job is, writing is a key part of being a great employee, student, and communicator.
We believe everyone can become a better writer — even those of us on our blog team here at HubSpot. Consider us your partners on this journey and this guide as your beacon. Use the chapter links below to jump ahead to a particular section, or keep reading to dive right in.
You’ve heard people talk about grammar … probably something along the lines of: “Sorry, I am SUCH a grammar freak!” Or, the infamous you’re vs. yourdebate.
Grammar encompasses a lot of rules and techniques. Here are a handful of my favorite grammar tip lists.
Some writing skills are repeated in these lists, but that means they’re that much more important!
Remember when spelling was its own subject in school? As we grew up, it was phased out of our daily learning, but spelling is still a vital writing skill.
We all struggle with certain words (Feb-ru-ary, anyone?), but certain misspellings can completely change the meaning of a phrase or piece of writing — and mean massive confusion for co-workers or customers.
Below, I’ve aggregated some of the most common misuses and misspellings (as inspired by this list from the B2B Insights blog).
“Continual” means always occurring, whereas “continuously” means never-ending.
i.e. stands for “id est” meaning “”in other words,”” while “e.g.” stands for “exempli gratia” meaning ““for example””.
“Elicit” means to evoke some sort of response, whereas “illicit” means “illegal.”
“Alternately” means to take turns –or alternate, whereas alternatively” presents one or more options.
Refute” is to disprove with evidence, whereas “rebut” is to disagree.
“Farther” refers to physical distance, whereas “further” refers to a greater degree of something.
Alright is actually not a legitimate word … use “all right instead.”
Uninterested” means to have no interest, whereas “disinterested” means to be removed or neutral to a situation.
Who’s” is a contraction for ““who is,” whereas whose is used to show ownership of something. (The same goes for it’s vs. its.)
Than is used when comparing two things, whereas then is used to express a sense of time, such as what comes next or what used to be.
Punctuation refers to a whole host of symbols used in writing, but I’m going to review the few most popular in this section.
Periods should be your go-to way to end a sentence. Every sentence should end in a period (if you’re not using a question mark or exclamation point.
Exclamation points — which are used to express excitement, accentuate an important point, or get the reader’s attention — should be used sparingly! If you overuse them, they won’t be effective when you need them to be! These sentences are great examples of completely unnecessary exclamation points! Woot!
Question marks are appropriate for — you guessed it — questions. Using questions throughout your writing can help create a conversational, friendly tone (which we talk about in our language skills section below).