Many people think that writing is a difficult skill. However, with a few tips and tricks, it’s actually quite simple to become a solid academic writer. Anyone can write if you put enough effort into it—and effort remains the key. The process of writing takes a little getting used to, particularly in terms of developing a strong sense of the structure and flow of your specific genre, be it a speech or an academic essay. But, essentially, you need only a pen and paper—or a keyboard—to start writing. Additionally, writing helps you express yourself and communicate with others. Plus, it’s an effective way to record your thoughts. Everyone benefits from learning effective ways to engage in written communication. In this article, we’ll take a look at the importance of writing through history.
The Importance of Writing Skills Nowadays
Early people began to write down their thoughts to make records of business transactions and daily events. The Mesopotamians and the Chinese had very early systems of writing. Among the most prominent early writers were the ancient Egyptians around 3500 BCE. They used papyrus, a plant fiber, as their primary writing material. Before that, people recorded information by carving it into stone tablets. Early people also painted writing onto walls and impressed it onto clay tablets with a stylus. In time, these techniques developed into more familiar technologies like pen and paper, printing, and typewriters.
By understanding how others communicated before electronic devices, it’s easier to see why writing is important. Many of our cultural, social and political customs were established through thousands of years of development, meaning that the writing skills you use today tie you to a long history of traditions and standards that show your readers you are part of a socioeconomic class and a particular tradition. Without literacy, you can’t share your ideas clearly and effectively, nor can you demonstrate your competence via written words.
Essential Benefits of Writing Skills
Two important ways writing skills benefit you come in education and the workplace:
- You need strong writing skills to get good grades. Writing is an essential part of the educational process, and students write essays frequently, typically once a week at least. Because students need to be able to write essays well, many turn to writing services like Smart Writing Service in order to get professional help with their writing and their skills. Indeed, professional academic writing services and their talented expert writers can provide model essays that students can use to build their writing skills.
- You also benefit from strong writing skills in the workplace. Being able to write well in a professional setting ensures that you can communicate with bosses, peers, and subordinates to have your message understood and acted upon. Indeed, employers often report that written communication skills are one of their top job requirements.
The Purpose of Writing Skills
The purpose of writing is to express yourself and share your ideas with others, whether in school, at work, or beyond. Many writers use their writing as an aid for creative thinking or for preparing lessons or essays for schoolwork assignments. Poets use their writing as a source of emotional release and artistry that can last for decades or even centuries afterward. There are many ways to express yourself through writing—but you need to be able to write clearly and effectively in order to deliver your ideas onto paper and into your readers’ minds.
One of the main purposes of literacy is preserving past knowledge via the written word. That’s why we have information from ancient civilizations that no longer exist today—and why your words will live on after you are gone. As we noted, the Ancient Egyptians were among the first people in history to write down their thoughts; this allowed them to build on what they learned in the past, but only because they could write well. One of the benefits of strong writing skills is that your words will have an impact on others and are likely to shape how other people think.
While today computers offer spelling and grammar advice, historically it was important to write every word correctly, particularly when committing ink to paper. Prior to the invention of the printing press, almost all writing was copied out manually, often by scribes or monks, a painstaking process that could introduce critical copying errors that would compound with each new copy. Fortunately, the modern world doesn’t have to deal with this as frequently, but even in the digital world, you can’t rely entirely on computers to do your grammar and spelling checks for you, or you, too, will end up with unfortunate errors. Everyone needs strong writing skills in order to ensure that their writing is well written and that the changes that computerized writing suggestions offer are indeed useful and correct.
Wrapping Up about Writing Skills
Essentially, anyone can become a good writer if they put enough effort into it. Writing doesn’t have to be hard, and the benefits of writing skills for your educational and work careers are unlimited. People have used written communications for millennia, since the first authors started writing their ideas down thousands of years ago. From the invention of papyrus to make writing portable to the invention of the internet to make it instantaneous, writing skills have always been an important way of communicating effectively and helping all of us to share our thoughts with others in a way that they can easily understand.