I was born in Brazil so naturally I wrote my first articles and blog posts in Portuguese.
Back then, the idea of being able to write a complete and easy to read article in English felt distant and pretty much impossible. Even though I could read them pretty well.
As I started gearing my career toward international opportunities it felt inevitable to develop my English skills even further. So I started writing content in English.
Now, I'm far from perfect, but I'm pretty happy with everything I've learned so far. And even happier to share it.
(I also like to think that my middle school English teacher would be proud, it helps a lot).
So, without further ado, here's some tips that helped me along the way:
Overcome the mental barrier
Writing in a language that you didn't grow up speaking can be hard by itself. But one thing that makes it worse is thinking that you need to be fluent to even start writing.
You don't. If you don't feel confident with your current English writing skills, write anyway.
One thing that can happen is that after you're done you may not feel comfortable publishing it, and that's ok. You can always come back and rewrite it after your writing skill improves.
Worst case scenario you'll have a draft, and a slight increase in your English composition skills. Win-win!
Your first paragraphs will suck
They will. Mine did, it takes some effort.
I read somewhere on the internet that the only way to write a good article is to write 1000 crappy articles. The same applies to any skill you'll want to develop, learning goes hand in hand with repetition.
You need to be patient, focused and keep writing. Set a small time frame for writing every day, try to make it a small habit.
And whenever you feel down and think that you're not moving fast enough, remember the teachings of this funny yellow dog.
Plan your text, but not too much
Remember that you are writing in a second language and oftentimes you will be translating and writing at the same time. Which can be quite tiresome.
Things get much easier when you start to actually think about your text in English. But until then you need to improve your writing experience in other ways.
Try writing down the core idea of your text and how you'll expand it. This will help you anchor down your train of thought and help you focus on that specific subject.
But also, do not overplan it, write down some initial structure but don't get paralized by it. You can always change it if it doesn't sound right anymore.
Write first, correct later
Writing takes a considerate amount of mental energy. Save some brain bandwidth and try not to worry if your grammar and spelling are perfect in your first draft.
Try your best to not be insecure while writing, focus on transferring the ideas from your head to the paper. No one but yourself is judging you right now.
After you're done then you should do grammar and spell check. There are quite a few free online tools that help you with that. I prefer writing in Google Docs as its native spell check is excellent.
"Quote" search when unsure
Have you ever written a sentence that, despite being grammarly correct, sounds a little bit off?
Whenever that happens I search it between quotation marks on Google.
If it returns lots of results it probably means that the sentence is right. Bonus points if that sentence appears in a reputable source like a book or dictionary.
Simple is best
Try not to be too flamboyant, ostentatious or overelaborate.
English has fantastic words that roll out of the mouth and sound incredible.
Like flabbergasted, I love that word.
But remember that you're writing a technical piece and the subject is much too complex already.
And I'm not talking fancy words only, try to keep your paragraphs simple and easy to understand. Keeping it simple also lowers your surface area for grammatical errors.
A good rule of thumb is that if after a single read you can't capture the paragraph's core idea, it is too complex.
Remember that your goal is to transfer your knowledge to an audience, so try and make it as easy as possible for them.
If it is serious business, find a proofreader
People usually don't mind small mistakes if your content is good enough. If someone points out a grammar fix in the comments, thank them, fix it and move on. It's not personal.
Now, if the piece that you're writing is for some kind of hiring process or it will be featured at a medium that has no EDIT button, you better find a good proofreader.
I've had great experiences with proofreaders on Fiverr in the past. It's not expensive if you're not in a hurry and the peace of mind is definitely worth the money.
And that's it, thanks for reading!
Which one do you think is the best tip?
Share yours in the comments!
Cover photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
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Latest comments (40)
These are pretty neat tips! 💯
I am doing your „write first correct later“ approach for quite a while, and it keeps me staying productive and motivated when writing blog posts.
I use deepl (free version) and I think it is a very good tool to fix my grammar or vocabulary issues.
(Not using it for comments though, so please be patient 😜)
There are a lot of run-on sentences in this article. You may want to look into it and correct them. A guide is in Copy-editing essentials. One example: "The same applies to any skill you'll want to develop, learning goes hand in hand with repetition."
Also:
grammarly correct → grammatically correct
Absolutely, my friend the reporter says you have to get the ideas/story out first, then go back.
He says, don't try to craft every sentence to death one sentence at a time. It will take too long and you risk getting tired of it.
My favorite word is onomatopoeia ;D
Thanks for sharing. I just finished an English post and I'm not comfortable with it. So I searched for tips, and found your article. It's great!
Nice! I'll do the course and write about it in a few weeks then
That's good to know!
Things like grammar or more like writing style/techniques?
I haven't but it is definitely on my "next things to try" list. What's your opinion on it? Is it worth taking?
Thank you for the incredible article! I found it so helpful, I made an entire video about it: youtu.be/J-HvCPaCLj0
Hope that's okay!
Whaaat 🤯
That's more than okay, Amruta, that's fantastic! Thank you very much, I'm super happy now 😄😄😄
Thank you!!!
Also, I'm super biased but I really liked the video. Great job!
Oh, I am so glad to hear that!!
Thank you for the article. I expected more about
non-nativebut gothow to start.I consider that article would be better if it had a title that mirrors the content.
So I would give your article name: "Technical writing tips for beginners" or something similar.
Because:
Glad I could help! 😄
I also do the same by searching on Google if a sentence I've made up has been used by other English fellows 😁
A great tool is translate-shell that lets you translate directly from the terminal: github.com/soimort/translate-shell
Hello Vitor! Thank you for the great article! I am also non-English speaker (Russia), so it is really helpful for me :)
In your profile you say that you love cooking. I am a developer, and we’ve created an app called RecipeFinder (Twitter: @RecipeFinderApp). We are just students, and it is our first iOS app that we want to publish in AppStore. Could you check out its demo video in Twitter and give feedback on functionality? Thanks!
Sure! It looks very promising, I can see that you guys are using that fancy new button UI. Where do you get the recipes feed?
Oh, thank you very much! We use Edamam API for recipes. Do you think that application is worth 1$/month subscription? Sooner we’ll add Discover tab, where users will be able to create and discover recipes.
Fantastic. And a really cheap API indeed, let me know when you guys ship an Android version 😄
Ok 👍
Writing is not about showing how much you know or conveying your ideas to an audience. It's about changing ideas of your audience and the amount of value you can bring in to the community. Nobody cares what ideas you actually have.
youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM
Thank you very much, also very useful for people who suffer from dyslexia to.
Great article. I use the "quote" tip a lot. My wife is an English teacher, and she proofreads most of my writing, so guess I'm spoiled. It's surprising the amount of errors and suggestions she makes on pieces that I thought were ready to go.
Tools like Grammarly or LanguageTool are godsend. I also found that printing the text also helps a lot during proofreading YMMV.
EDIT: I'm based in Argentina, so message me when you get here if you want :)