Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Tips for writing sentences like a native speaker

English isn't my native tongue, but I've been writing novels in English for a while. Most of the time, I can be aware of what's grammatically correct and what's not. But making sure that a sentence...

2 answers  ·  posted 11y ago by Alexandro Chen‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:47:18Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7524
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Alexandro Chen‭ · 2019-12-08T02:47:18Z (almost 5 years ago)
English isn't my native tongue, but I've been writing novels in English for a while. Most of the time, I can be aware of what's grammatically correct and what's not. But making sure that a sentence sounds like one written by a native speaker is a harder task.

I've been trying the following:

- Writing everyday (I try using simple words and simple sentences)
- Reading every day (and check in the dictionary words that I don't know)
- I copy paragraphs from my favorite novels (I read the paragraph once, I write it, and I correct the differences.) In the process, I check in the dictionary every word I don't know (or translate it to Spanish, my mother tongue). 
- Writing everyday
- Check my sentences on Google Books (the more results the more confident I am. If there are zero results, then the sentence is probably wrong).

I'm not sure if these are the best ways of accomplishing what I want. Any suggestions? (other than looking for a native speaker to correct my work)?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-03-30T04:49:43Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 9