All You Should Know About Writing Conventions

Many students perceive writing conventions as a sort of screamer. However, they are must-know basics for everyone, and no one can be successful without mastering them. You cannot have a good job without writing correctly. You cannot even send a complaining letter to any of the organizations without knowing how to write them properly.

Therefore, you should learn writing conventions as early as possible, in school or college, because none of the spheres of our lives can exist without them. Even if you think that you will never face those conversations, you will see throughout your life how often you will need to apply them.

What Conventions in Writings Are

Writing conventions are the basic rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Only thanks to them can you understand the text when reading it or understand the speech of a politician when hearing it, for example.

Can you imagine if one of those was created without sticking to conventions? It would be a mess then because anyone would create content according to his own understanding. People wouldn’t simply understand each other and could not even read a book or an article.

This is what writing conventions are created for. Without them, you wouldn’t understand a single message or even a sentence in a text. You understand the meaning of any message only thanks to them. They activate it and show you how to read it. They indicate the intonation, and only thanks to proper punctuation can you really get the main idea and understand the emotional part of a book or magazine article.

Writing conventions are obligatory to learn for anyone, especially students. Of course, if you have tons of assignments and always lack time, you might miss this important part of your life and studies. This guide will help you get a better idea of writing conventions, though, so keep reading till the end.

Core Writing Conventions

Don’t be so scared when hearing about these non-understandable things. Once you understand what main writing connections are, you will find it much easier to learn and master them. Therefore, the core writing conventions include:

• Spelling.
• Punctuation;
• Capitalization;
• Grammar.

We bet you have heard about all of them many times already and should have at least some understanding of what they are and where they come from. If not, though, see the explanation below.

Spelling conventions

Even if you don’t realize it, you started to get acquainted with spelling conventions in early childhood. For example, your parents could teach you letters and words when you were a little child. You learned to recognize and point letters in your name or such important words as “mother,” “father,” “granny,” etc.

Everyone learns how to write these words in childhood, and you aren’t an exception for sure. This is how spelling conventions work, and they are extremely important in life, especially for your career. You don’t even imagine how many CVs are rejected because of quite banal spelling mistakes.

It means that you should learn spelling as early as possible. When you are young, it is much easier to learn everything new, and spelling isn’t an exception. When certain spelling patterns are already formed in your mind, it will be very difficult to get rid of them and make your brain remember new ones.

Punctuation conventions

You might think that missing a comma or a semicolon isn’t that crucial, but you are wrong. Punctuation is something that makes us understand the true meaning of the message or text. If you read a message without a single punctuation mark, would you understand it properly? Of course, not.

Everyone would insert his or her meaning in that message and understand it not like the author wanted but like your brain would interpret it. Some people wouldn’t understand the message at all because it would be deprived of sense and reminded of just a set of words and nothing more.

Punctuation gives you an idea of where to make a pause, where is the excitement or disappointment, what intonation the author supposed us to read the message with, etc. You may say that when you speak, you don’t use punctuation and everyone is happy with it. It’s not true, though. You use many ways to show punctuation when speaking. For example, you make pauses where necessary, use proper intonation, rhythm, expression, etc. If you spoke monotonously, no one would get your message either.

Therefore, punctuation is a way of expressing the message when writing it. Without it, any text and even sentence can be created. Learning punctuation is crucial because people won’t understand what you want to say in a written form.

Capitalization conventions

Yes, you might say that capitalization isn’t as important as the rest of conventions because everyone would understand the message no matter whether some words start from capital letters or not. However, thanks to capitalization, you can see where the next sentence begins. Although there is a colon, your sight will identify a new sentence much easier when there is a capital letter.

Moreover, many words can be emphasized by capitalization. Thanks to it, you can identify the names of countries, cities, or people. You might say that anyone would understand the name of a person or a city even if they are not capitalized.

You will be surprised to know that many names are not as common as the names of some cities. Many book characters are named after various plants, animals, or subjects. Therefore, you will never understand a character’s name if it is not capitalized.

Grammar conventions

This scary word isn’t that scary at all if you understand what it really means. Grammar includes:

• The structure of sentences and paragraphs;
• Choice of words;
• Parts of speech;
• Clauses and phrases.

Words must also be arranged in a sentence properly, and this is what grammar was created for. There might be too many rules and exceptions, and it is easy to get lost in them all; that’s true. However, you don’t have to learn them all by heart. If you ask your mother or grandpa, who writes everything without mistakes, whether they can recall grammar rules, you will hardly hear a positive answer.

The truth is most people learn and recall those rules when being children, and since they practice a lot — write, type, or speak something every single day — they never forget those conventions. It means our brain doesn’t forget what we have learned and just applies them automatically. You will also apply all conventions automatically once learning them properly. If you have no idea how to learn them, though, check the following tips.

How to Learn Writing Conventions

Anyone should start learning writing conventions as early as possible. If you were a diligent kid, you could start learning them and acquire some basics when being in kindergarten. Then, in elementary school, you would just learn them more, and until the end of your school, you would become really proficient.

What to do if you weren’t that diligent, though, and didn’t think writing conventions would play such a crucial role in your life? You have some time to catch up and improve the situation. Just follow the tips below.

Read a lot

This might sound like a paradox, but you really need to read a lot if you want to learn how to write properly. Modern children and students spend more time on different gadgets and devices instead of reading books. This is a mistake because, for that reason, you feel confused about writing conventions.

The truth is when you read, and you learn them automatically without even realizing it. Your brain simply sees the example of how sentences should be built, the words are spelled, and punctuation is used to express a certain meaning. You don’t even have to learn the rules because your brain is recording everything, and you learn everything subconsciously.

Therefore, if you want to know those crucial and so significant writing conventions, you should put your gadget aside for a while, take an interesting book (not an audiobook, though) and start reading. You can read anything — books, scientific articles, fiction, advertisements, magazines, and even comics. Whatever you read makes you practice a lot.

Some more tips

When writing a college essay that would meet the requirements of your teacher, do the following:

• Avoid using fragments;
• Don’t use abbreviations;
• Create complete sentences only;
• Say no to run-on sentences;
• When mentioning someone for the first time, write his or her name;
• Learn how to cite properly.

Conclusion

Writing conventions aren’t as scary as they might seem. If you, for some reason, have missed them in school, you still have time to learn them and become a proficient writer. You cannot avoid learning them, though, because you will have to apply conventions in every sphere of your life, even if you aren’t going to become a professional writer.

Any professional in his or her field must know wiring conventions. Even business owners write and sign different papers and documents daily. If you don’t have time to read and practice more but need to write a top-notch paper the soonest, you can always use the help of our professional writers, editors, and proofreaders.

We will deliver a top-quality paper to you within the toughest deadlines, and you will be fully satisfied with your grade. Stop struggling and pick professional assistance!