How to make your writing exude confidence
Confidence is hard to learn if you’re not a naturally confident writer. Read this handy guide to learn how to tweak your language and use Readable’s tone sliders to nail a confident tone to persuade your readers.
Why does confidence matter in writing?
Confidence. It seems to come so naturally to some. An essential distinction in writing is between confidence and arrogance. It’s important to be able to toe the line between asserting yourself as a thought leader and repelling your reader and making yourself difficult to relate to.
Your reader needs to trust you as an authority and buy into your words. Of course, everything you’re saying is true — but your reader has no reason to trust that yet. You have to convey trustworthiness in your words since you aren’t there to look them in the eye.
How do I use Readable to improve my writing confidence?
Firstly, our aim with the Readable platform is to not only tell you what to correct in your writing but to educate you on the why. This is so that writing impactful content eventually comes second nature to you and you can honestly say you’ve improved as a writer using our software. It’s much more important for us to help you with your confidence as a writer than for you to be 100% dependent on AI to clean up your prose. This is why we use a combination of AI and guiding principles. Using our editor will help you with your confidence as you learn the principles of writing clearly.
We also have tools designed to help you specifically with writing in a confident tone.
Hedge word detector
Readable has a hedge word detector. Hedge words and phrases include:
- Possibly
- I think
- Probably
In other words, they’re words used to convey uncertainty. And you definitely don’t want to convey uncertainty in confident writing.
Behold the Readable Hedge Word Detector, which you can find in the Text Lab section of the tool.
As you can see, the detector has highlighted anything which could be seen as hedging. By removing these words, you can increase the impact of your writing.
Using the dedicated detector means you can zero in on this one aspect. But, of course, you can also find a hedge word count in the ‘issues’ tab of your Readable editor under Writing Style Issues.
Tone detection
As a Readable subscriber, you’ll also have access to tone detection in the main editor. Found in the ‘reach’ tab of your readability results, you can analyse your writing for:
- Formality (formal/conversational)
- Sentiment (negative/positive)
- Personalism (impersonal/personal)
Using a positive tone exudes confidence. The formality of your content depends on the audience. Personalism is a more risky move which could have great gains. You have to know your audience well, but if you do, getting personal with them will set you apart and bring them closer. If you don’t know your audience well, getting too personal will come across as presumptuous and arrogant, so it will do the opposite of what you want.
The most important aspect of confidence is positivity, so consider putting this tone slider at the forefront of your editing process. By using a positive tone, you’re emphasising your strengths, rather than dwelling on the negatives.
How does readability improve your confidence?
Another important aspect of confident writing is clarity. A lot of people try to assert themselves as an authority by cloaking their language in jargon and long, winding sentences. In fact, this only highlights their insecurities.
The best way is to communicate simply with your audience. After all, you want them to understand you, otherwise, you’ll lose them.
Here are some things you can do with Readable to improve your readability and credibility:
Passive voice detection
Converting as much as possible of your passive voice to active will make your writing more trustworthy and effective. For example, some companies say “mistakes were made” instead of “we made a mistake”. This distances them from taking responsibility and makes them look less trustworthy and respectable.
By using the active voice, you not only sound more confident, but you earn respect from the reader.
Unrivalled readability scores
When it comes to our readability scores, only the best will do. As well as our bespoke Readable Grade Level which grades from A—E, we have all the most respected readability formulas, optimised in our algorithm to adapt to web writing best practices.
Using Readable, you can reduce lengthy sentences and unnecessary jargon. This way, you break down the barrier between yourself and your reader. It takes confidence to convey your message as simply as possible and your reader will respect you for saying it like it is. You can still be artful with your language. Just use language your reader can relate to.
