"Read books. A lot of books." An invaluable piece of advice from a distinguished philosophy professor of mine.
As a freshmen I'd somehow found my way into his ancient philosophy course–a junior/senior elective typically reserved for PHL majors. While I was able to pass the course, I was always embarrassed by my paper submissions because they'd be returned to me dripping in red ink from his observations. This was a man that had his own translations of Plato's works published in textbooks, and he cared enough to take the time to point out my juvenile grammatical errors on 20 page papers! At the close of the course I wanted to "make amends" for my shortcomings by asking him how I could improve my writing ability. I anticipated he'd recommend some tome on grammar [that I'd never end up reading] but instead he simply said "Read books. A lot of books" and he left it at that.
I've no idea of the count of books I've read since taking his advice to heart, but it's made an enormous difference in the way I structure prose, the vocabulary I use, the tone & voice of my writing, and I could go on... I feel that if you read the works of authors you like on topics that you enjoy, you'll absorb much of what makes their works great. You'll find yourself improving without consciously trying to improve your mechanics–but you need to enjoy what you read for it to work!
And as a check on your own development? Throw in works like "A Clockwork Orange" or "Fight Club" from time to time. These works have intentional errors and nonsense thrown in by their authors to mess with their readers. If your head begins to hurt while reading them then, in terms of your own development of skills, you've done something right!
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"Read books. A lot of books." An invaluable piece of advice from a distinguished philosophy professor of mine.
As a freshmen I'd somehow found my way into his ancient philosophy course–a junior/senior elective typically reserved for PHL majors. While I was able to pass the course, I was always embarrassed by my paper submissions because they'd be returned to me dripping in red ink from his observations. This was a man that had his own translations of Plato's works published in textbooks, and he cared enough to take the time to point out my juvenile grammatical errors on 20 page papers! At the close of the course I wanted to "make amends" for my shortcomings by asking him how I could improve my writing ability. I anticipated he'd recommend some tome on grammar [that I'd never end up reading] but instead he simply said "Read books. A lot of books" and he left it at that.
I've no idea of the count of books I've read since taking his advice to heart, but it's made an enormous difference in the way I structure prose, the vocabulary I use, the tone & voice of my writing, and I could go on... I feel that if you read the works of authors you like on topics that you enjoy, you'll absorb much of what makes their works great. You'll find yourself improving without consciously trying to improve your mechanics–but you need to enjoy what you read for it to work!
And as a check on your own development? Throw in works like "A Clockwork Orange" or "Fight Club" from time to time. These works have intentional errors and nonsense thrown in by their authors to mess with their readers. If your head begins to hurt while reading them then, in terms of your own development of skills, you've done something right!