With the advent of the Internet and all of its email and instant messaging glory, the emphasis on developing good writing skills has seemed to fall by the wayside. While it’s true that many of our communications today are less formal, this is no excuse for not being able to turn the writing switch to “professional” and create a clearly written document. This is a key business skill that many young professionals today do not take seriously enough.

How do you go about improving your writing? Well, like anything else, practice makes perfect in this case. I recommend writing some articles on topics you are interested in and then publishing them for free on the internet, just to get some feedback on your writing while you practice. Two sites that I write on that I’ve found to be excellent are:

• BlogCritics.org - You have to email the administrator to sign up (see article here), but it is well worth it as you can write on a variety of topics. I really like this site, here is a link to the articles I have written.
• EzineArticles.com - Another great site, when you sign up (use this link), you have 10 articles submissions and then your account comes up for review to elevate you to the Platinum author level. The difference is that for Basic members (what you start out as), you have limited submissions and it can take a week to get published, while Platinum members have unlimited submissions and get published within a business day. Multiple ezines and newsletters use this site to get good articles, so you can have a lot of exposure as well. Here is a link to the articles I have written.

Remember, you can’t get any better if you don’t practice. Take the time to improve your writing and you won’t be disappointed with the results.