Why? Well, standard of your writing has always been important. Today, though, more than ever before, FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT. We are bombarded by written word in its many forms -- books, pamphlets, magazines, signs, e-mail, web sites and many other media.

We are all suffering from information overload and are forced to find ways of screening out as much as we can. We thus tend to make quick decisions on what to read and what not to. First impressions increasingly determine what we read and what we don't, and poor writing leads to a poor first impression.

The following list of tips should help you to avoid some of most common slip-ups.

1. Capitals: Avoid temptation to capitalize words in middle of a sentence Just To Provide Emphasis Like This. If you want to be more emphatic consider using bold face, italics, color or larger text.

2. Commas: The most common use of comma is to join together short sentences to make a single longer sentence. We do this with one of following small joining words: and, or, but, yet, for, nor, or so. For example:

We have finished work, and we are looking forward to weekend.

Notice that two halves of this sentence could each be sentences in their own right. They thus need to be separated with a comma and joining word. In next example, though, we don't need a comma:

We have finished work and are looking forward to weekend.

The halves of that sentence could not stand alone, so no comma was used.

A story idea you may be thinking of writing into a full-fledge novel right now has a good chance of having been thought of by another writer. She may already be writing about it; he may have already published it.

This is what makes writing interesting -- it's like a big spin-the-bottle game where we -- writers and authors -- take a stab at putting our own brand of originality (or uniqueness) in a theme that's been used so many times.

It's like beating something up until it turns into a pulp; or wringing out a piece of cloth until there's not a drop of water left. And because we're writers, there's no letting up -- we'd continue to write about things that have already been written about same way that an obsessed Beatles fan would play "Hey, Jude" over and over on his old phonograph and get absolutely high while singing, "Na na na na na na na...na na na na..Hey Jude..."

It was Heraclitus, Greek philosopher who said, "We cannot cross same river twice." And it's true because second time we cross a river we've crossed before, we're different and so is water. Of course, he was talking about theory of communication process -- that change in person who crossed river a year ago was caused by his intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships over time: his field of experience has changed since then. Thus, a year later and he happens to cross same river (or a similar experience/person/situation) again, something has already changed, and it's not same as it was a year ago.