Look Your Best: assessing your own writing

Good writing is an essential life skill that influences how others perceive your intelligence, competence, and professionalism. Poor writing—even in emails—can make you appear uneducated or careless, while strong writing communicates clarity, confidence, and credibility.

Effective writing is built on four foundational elements: readability, correctness, appropriateness and thought. These ensure clear style, coherent structure, suitable tone for the audience, and logical, thoughtful organisation of ideas.

Word‑blindness occurs when you’re too familiar with your text to see mistakes. Solutions include letting your draft rest for at least a day or two, printing it out, and reading it aloud to shift perspective and spot errors you’d normally miss.

Frequent pitfalls include jargon, clichés, passive voice, rambling, overwriting, inconsistent formatting, poor structure, and assuming the reader knows what you know (the “curse of knowledge”). Addressing these strengthens clarity and improves reader engagement.

We recommend continuous reading in your field, studying high‑quality examples, using readability tools, keeping a personal style‑mistakes log, practising different writing genres, attending writing courses, and seeking constructive feedback from peers.