All voracious readers may not be good writers, but most good writers are thorough readers. It’s amazing how developing a reading habit can help you acquire better writing habits as well. Watching movies or TV series may boost your speaking capabilities, but when it comes to writing, reading helps in more ways than one.
Reading is a combination of two things: comprehension of what you read, and then memorizing the matter. Many studies suggest that the combination of comprehension and memorizing stays in your subconscious. This improves your writing skills to a great extent, especially when it comes to the choice of words and grammar. It doesn’t matter whether you read books, magazines, or newspapers; as long as you keep reading, you can expect to see a remarkable change in your writing.
Expanding your vocabulary
Isn’t it frustrating when you are searching for a specific word that would make a sentence sound better but you can’t put your finger on it? Eventually, you try searching online with a few alternative words that would fit the context appropriately. This is often a challenge for writers who don’t read voraciously. The concept is simple: the more you read, the more words you stock in your vocabulary. You also know the context in which specific words would suit better. This can translate into more cohesive and meaningful sentences.
You don’t need to fight with your mind to constantly come up with fancy words. Once you start writing, they will automatically come into your mind because you know the context and what word to use in which sentence.
Improving your grammar
Reading not only improves your vocabulary but also helps you avoid grammatical errors. It is easy to overlook minor grammatical errors, especially when you get into the flow of writing. You tend to write pages at a stretch so that you can pen down your thoughts without any distractions. This may lead to several grammatical mistakes if you are not careful. For example, you forget to switch tenses between sentences.
You can easily avoid these costly errors if you read more. Every publisher hires an experienced editor to proofread the content before publishing it. Whether it is a book, newspaper, or magazine, you will hardly find any grammatical errors in them. That’s why reading grammatically flawless pieces can improve your writing skills significantly. You will make fewer mistakes than before. And if you are still not sure about your grammar, you can always proofread. Proofreading your writing helps you identify grammatical and punctuation errors that you can correct before submitting it.
Developing your writing style
It doesn’t matter whether you write for your business requirements or a newspaper, your writing style reveals a lot about your reading habits. Reading exposes you to various writing styles. You need to develop a writing style that others will consider as your signature. For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote like William Shakespeare, and Sidney Sheldon never wrote like Harper Lee. Each had their style of writing, which enthralls book-lovers even today.
Freelance content writers, for example, need to be acquainted with various types of writing styles. An independent blogger may choose to stick to a specific writing style that suits his/her topics. But freelance content writers need to read voraciously to pick up different writing techniques. They may have to write a funny article on cats and their mischievous activities followed by a press release of a dental clinic.
Unless the writer knows how to write a press release, he/she may not be able to complete his/her task. Plus, reading also helps you switch from one type of writing style to another quickly because your subconscious has already registered how to write different types of articles.
You should develop the habit of reading slowly. It is not a good idea to quickly go through a few articles before writing a similar piece. You may not learn anything that way. You may have to turn to the reference articles every time you write something similar.
Boosting your comprehension
You write for a purpose. You don’t just fill up pages with random thoughts thinking that they would suddenly make sense. But how do you know that what you are writing will make sense to the reader? That’s where comprehending a subject becomes essential. With a subject in mind, you write something that you think the reader will understand. But the trick here is to make your writing so easy that almost anyone can understand what you mean. Merely using smart words just for the sake of making your content look polished and authoritative doesn’t cut it.
The idea is to get into the minds of the readers. And reading different types of books gives you an idea of how to comprehend a subject and then write about it. It’s not a skill that you acquire overnight. You need to read a lot, then write, and then rewrite to sharpen your comprehension skills.
But sometimes, it is practically impossible to spend time reading, especially when you have a deadline to meet. Reading is a habit and you may not develop that habit in a week. Therefore, if you feel you don’t have time to read and then write your assignment, you can always look to writing experts for help. They will ensure that your essays, research papers, or any other writing assignment conveys the proper message and connects with your target readers. Learning from them can also be the key to improving your writing skills. Add this to your reading habit and you may soon find yourself writing like a pro.
