Reading Like a Writer
If you want to be a better writer, you have to read everyday like a writer reads. So, this isn't just leisurely reading; it is time to start paying attention. Most writers don't learn to write by diagramming sentences, learning the rules of punctuation and grammar, or by learning about the parts of speech. It's not that those things aren't important. It's that they are better learned through reading than memorizing rules.
So, what is reading like a writer? Well, let me demonstrate through an illustration. Here is the first sentence from Atul Gawande's essay, The Checklist. It first appeared in the New Yorker and then was turned into a short book. This is the first sentence of the essay. You will notice that the sentence is a long one because it ends with a list. The writer first writes a complete sentence, which he ends with a colon, as circled in red, and then begins a list.
Lists are something to watch out for. Writers use them all the time to provide examples or clarify something by providing examples. In the list above, he is providing examples of the damage that the human body can survive these days. Here is another example from the same piece, just a few paragraphs down.
This time, the writer uses a dash instead of a colon between the sentence and the list because the list items have qualifying phrases starting with "if" in them. Because it is a more informal list, we use a dash instead of a colon.
Now you should go and look at some of the major publications, such as, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report and find some lists. Analyze how they are put together and then try to mimic what they do using your own information.
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