Saturday, January 13, 2007

Article Writing: How Do You Write For Quality?

Editor Note:
Steve Dempster has seen the short cuts authors use to crank out articles quickly. I too see these short cuts on a daily basis and they just don't work in the long run. This article is good advice for new authors and pros alike.


Article directories receive hundreds of articles daily - but why do some articles perform better than others? In this article we examine some of the reasons.

Article writing, for a competent writer, is a fairly easy discipline. The task is to write an informative and interesting piece of work in the range of some 400-1200 words. Yet many articles that I, as an article directory editor, have seen are just not up to the mark. Why is that? Let's leave aside for the moment the ones that are grammatically poor or have been obviously assembled by cherry-picking several sources of information.

The function of an article written with the express intent of being reproduced throughout the internet on blogs, ezines and the like is to sell a product - indirectly. It should be written in such a fashion that the reader's interest is piqued and then held until the article's conclusion, resulting in a level of interest that stimulates the reader to click through to the author's site, link or whatever.

Poor articles do not achieve this goal for a variety of reasons and most of these can be summarised by the following points: ...



Steve Dempster writes fiction, copy and articles for the web. His directory site can be found here or for more writing info see his site I Want To Write!

Article Source: Bytepowered Articles

Five Optical Illusions To Make Your Writing Look Smarter, Sharper

Editors Note: Daphne Gray-Grant has posted another must read article for web writers that offers 5 tips for making or articles look great. Article directories and webmasters love to see articles formatted in a clean, clear and easy to read way. These 5 tips will make your articles stand out from the ordinary.



*The artwork of M.C. Escher shows crazy worlds in which staircases appear to go nowhere and people "sit" upside down or sideways.

*The plywood pillar at your local museum is painted a creamy, mottled white, with deep grey veins and other imperfections so it looks like real marble.

*When you put your dinner on a 12-inch plate instead of a 17-inch one, you eat less food and feel more satisfied by it.

What do these three facts have in common? They are all optical illusions. Illusions are important in writing, too. A piece that looks great will read better than one that is visually dull or confusing.

I'm old enough to have attended college when students commonly submitted essays written by hand. But even back in those dark, pre-computer ages, I learned pretty quickly that typewriting my work guaranteed a grade that was at least 10% higher! Anyone who doesn't pay attention to presentation is like the college student who insists on writing by hand -- or the chef who slaves over a luscious five-star meal and then slops it onto a blue plastic plate. But here's the good news. It's easy to improve your writing presentation. Let me give you five simple tricks you can adopt.

1) ...




A former journalist, Daphne Gray-Grant is a writing and editing coach who helps people writer better, faster. Visit her website at http://www.publicationcoach.com where you can sign up for her free weekly newsletter on power writing.

Article Source: Bytepowered Articles