You will be using your writing skills to make first impressions for the rest of your life, from simple e-mail correspondences to letters and business proposals and documents. You wouldn't write out your resume in SMS text abbreviations.

Here are some proven tips and techniques to writing well and writing for clarity.

1) Always know your audience. You should remember that your audience has (or lacks) certain knowledge about the topic, so don't cover ground like defining different types of flour if your audience is pastry chefs. If you are writing something more technical, for instance instructional materials, then by all means to start from the basics and work your way up. 2) Remember what you were taught in high school. Start your piece from a theme and know your ending before you begin. Once you know that, just start getting it down on the page - you can go back and rewrite your piece afterwards. Always start your piece with the most important point you have to make. 3) When rewriting, don't be afraid to throw away quite a lot of the original piece, even if it's the first several hundred words. Many writers are just warming up for the first paragraphs, so this is the part of your piece generally in the greatest need of rewriting.

Habits to avoid:

Once you have finished your piece, perform a find and replace for *ly - * is a wild card character and "ly" is whatever word you want to avoid using in your piece. If your sentences still read well without this word, leave them out - otherwise, replace the word you have removed with a better adjective.

Write in the active voice whenever you can. Remember that it is better to show than tell. As an example, compare these two sentences, the first in the passive voice, the second in the active voice: "Running, Brooke's heart raced as she attempted to evade her pursuers." "Brooke ran from her pursuers as fast as she could, her heart racing, as her mind sought any means to evade capture." The second scans better and holds the reader's attention far better than does the version in the passive voice. Take note of this.

Lastly, read anything you write out loud. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will weed out awkward, horrible prose like reading it out loud. Do this enough times, and you'll "hear" the words in your head. Once that step has happened, a lot more of your writing will get better with practice.

Writing well is a skill which is barely taught in our schools anymore. What once was commonplace in junior high classrooms is now reserved for college coursework; a truly tragic development.