No matter whether you write for your job, your business, or fun, you must be interested in improving your writing, or you would not be here at a website with the slogan “Better Communication for Smart People”.

And this made me wonder: What are three recommendations that I would make to anyone who wants to improve his or her writing skills?

The answer? 1. Look it up! 2. Read! 3. Write!

1. Look it up!

You have to be willing to “look it up”, if you want to improve your writing.

I go to Dictionary.com to look up word definitions and to check for proper hyphenation of words.

I go to Google to compare frequencies of competing phrases and expressions and to look beyond Dictionary.com for definitions.

And I go to Wikipedia for a rich source of information about words and the English language.

2. Read!

Better writers are more voracious readers.

What/where/how should you read?

Blogs let you read in snatches of time.

Books teach you about deep organization of a topic.

And news websites let you see how the same topic can be covered in several different styles.

3. Write!

I recommend that you “do it” by writing more email messages, blog posts, and articles.

Email messages let you test whether you are communicating well with your recipients.

Blog posts require you to present your thoughts in bite-size chunks.

And articles let you go into much more depth than you can with email and blog posts.