How to break monotony in your writing

I have been an examiner of 1119 English. What I really enjoyed was reading a piece of writing that did not bore me. I could tell it because I did not see repetition of the same expression often. The candidate varied his style of writing and he had a good command of the English language besides having a wide vocabulary.

When we write an essay, we should bear in mind our readers. They are the ones who will decide whether to read your written work or not. As such, variation of the style of writing, using different expression to put the same message across is what you need to do. In this respect, mastery of the language in terms of grammar, idioms, synonyms and so on should not be overlooked.

To put it in a nutshell, using various sentence structures, putting different words bearing the same meaning in your writing and inventing clear but interesting expressions will do the tricks of drawing readers to peruse what you have written.

If you are aware, I am just doing that in the preceding paragraphs.

Happy writing to all readers and English language learners.

How to express the same sentence differently

In writing, we do not want our readers to get bored after reading our works. To avoid this from happening, we have to vary the way we write our sentences. We should not stick to one sentence pattern. Hence, it is worth experimenting with various ways of expressing the same intended meaning in a sentence. I shall elaborate this point with a few examples.
Sentence 1: We had a picnic near the beach.
We can express this sentence in two more ways, that is:
a) We went for a picnic by the beach.
b) We were picnicking on the beach.

Sentence 2: The boy looked very thin.
This sentence can be rendered in other ways such as:
a) The boy was a bag of bones.
b) How skinny the boy was!
c) The boy had a skeletal look.

Sentence 3: Occasionally, we were scolded by our parents when we were up to our mischief.
You can express the above sentence differently as:
a) Sometimes, our parents told us off when we were naughty.
b) Once in a while, we got a telling-off by our parents for being mischievous.
c) For our mischief, at times we were reprimanded by our parents.
d) Our parents sometimes told us off when we were mischievous.

Sentence 3: His comic look triggered off our laughing machine for quite some time.
A few sentences of the same meaning can be made out of the above sentence.
a) We could not help laugh when we looked his funny face.
b) His comic face had us in stitches.
c) We laughed incessantly because of his funny look.

You can try our hand at making sentences with almost the same intended meaning. With practice, you can surely coin unique sentences in your writing.

How to use ‘used’

The word ‘used’ can be the past tense of ‘use’ which is a verb in the past tense. It is also an adjective and takes the meaning ‘second-hand’. When used with the preposition ‘to’ it means ‘accustomed to’ or ‘in the past one usually did something’. Readers may get confused just by reading the above explanations. Why not look at the following sentences to see how they appear in sentences.

1 I used all my savings to buy a new computer yesterday. [past tense of ‘use’]
2 A used car cost less than a new one. [second-hand]
3 I am used to being shouted at by the boss here. [accustomed to]
4 I used to play barefooted when I was a boy. [In the past, I usually played]

So much for the use of 'used' for your perusal.

Ways to add variety to our essays

Writing has been my hobby since I got into contact with languages in school. Frankly speaking, I write more English than Malay and Chinese. I seem to be fascinated by English because there is enough vocabulary for any situation.

In this post, I like to share with readers how you can break the monotony of your essay. To achieve this end, you have to know a lot of words which carry the same meaning in case you want to use them for variety. Besides, you must delve into phrasal verbs and know most of them so that they come in handy for you when you want to express the same idea after having used a verb for it. Let us look at one paragraph which I will compose offhand as an example.

1 For the time being, the computer is still indispensable to most of us. 2 We need to use this gadget to get our work done. As it can speed up our chore, it serves as a time-saver. 3 Besides, we can store data in the hard disk to be retrieved later. 4 Computers have found their way into factories, offices and schools because they are a great help at these places. 5 They help to expedite work in factories keep customers’ information and act as good teaching aids for students. 6 Most school-going children like to lay their hands on this modern invention for they are able to look for information need for their school projects through the Internet, play video games and communicate with their cyber friends. 7 In short, this sophisticated device has become part and parcel of our lives.

In the above paragraph, I use ‘the computer’ for the first time, ‘this gadget’ for the second and ‘this modern invention’ for the third and ‘this sophisticated device’ when I want to refer to it again. Similarly, ‘speed up’ is my first choice while I use ‘expedite’ subsequently to mean the same thing. ‘As’ appear in my third sentence to mean ‘because’ and ‘for’ is used to bear the same meaning in the sixth sentence. The use of ‘store’ and ‘keep’ is intended to bear the same appear in the third and fifth sentence respectively. The word ‘indispensable’ and ‘part and parcel of our lives’ are meant to carry the meaning of ‘cannot do without’.

So much for ways to add variety to our essays.

Sentence making is the key to good essay-writing

An essay actually consists of sentences. Hence, the ability to write grammatically correct sentences makes making essays very much easier.

From primary school, children should be trained to write correct sentences. As they grow up, they will have no problem writing essays. Of course, the contents will depend on their maturity of thought. They will start with simple ideas and advance to more mature ideas as they grow older.

Interest in a certain language is still important. Only interest will bring one to dig deeper into the ins and outs of the language one is keen to learn and master.

Using synonyms in writing

Using synonyms is the easiest a way adding variety of style to your writing. Hence, learners of English should make it a point to know as many synonyms as possible so that they will come in handy when we need them in our writing.

I will give an example here. One of the connectors that we use very often is ‘say’. The words similar in meaning or which can be used to replace this word are ‘utter’, ‘articulate’, ‘voice’, ‘state’, ‘mention’, ‘murmur’, and ‘whisper’.

Let us look at a paragraph using the above words:

One day, when I paid a visit to John, he said that I should have gone more often to his house. I ignored what he had uttered because whenever I wanted to voice my opinion against we will be engaging in verbal war. Thus, I usually mention this to my wife in the hope that she will excuse me for not visiting her cousin. My better half loves to whisper to me when we talk in public and sometimes I miss most of what she has murmured. She will feel offended and give me her cold shoulder there and then until I offer my apologies to her.