Write an Effective Article!

Most people can write good content, but have you ever thought about writing in a better, reader-friendly way? Whenever you write the first draft of an article, there are multiple punctuation and grammatical errors. This is a guide to writing an article which is easy on a reader’s mind.

First thing: Use paragraph breaks. Long paragraphs with no clear separation of facts can result in befuddled information. Your point may not get across, resulting in confusion of separate facts or data.

Ever read a paper or article which has full stops in the place of commas, and inappropriate usage of question marks? That might be a problem in the articles you write as well. Try using commas in long sentences, but if the single sentence has more than 35 words, break the sentence into multiple sentences instead. The data should be spanned out, but then again, don’t use too many sentences for a particular data set, or the reader may get the impression of skirting around the topic.

Next up is the usage of conjunctions. Words like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘so’, ‘or’, ‘because’ and ‘also’ should be used in the middle of the sentence, not at the end or the beginning. Starting a sentence with a conjunction doesn’t make sense, because conjunctions are supposed to join 2 relevant sentences.

You should also consider the target audience. Who do you want to make an impact on? Is it professionals in the field, or beginners? Does your article focus on issues that particular target audience wants to know more about?

Next is for checking your article from a reader’s point of view. Proofread your own article once. What message comes across to you from a reader’s point of view? Cross-check whether you want to get the same message across, and if it isn’t, what point in the article makes you think that? You are your own worst critic, so judge your article yourself first.

Now, an important tip. Use subtopics if possible. It divides your article into sections, and becomes organized. It gives a vibe of proper classification of data and/or facts.

Use bullet points, when stating multiple things. If your points go beyond 'Firstly', 'Secondly', and 'Thirdly', it’s a more feasible option, as words like 'Fourthly' and 'Fifthly' don’t really exist.

Now, treading into more common grammatical mistakes, the usage of ‘it’s’ and 'its'. ‘It’s’ is a contraction of 'It is'. On the other hand, 'its' is used in a possessive manner, meaning that 'its' refers to a possession of the indicated subject. However, if you’re using a country’s or individual's name (in that sentence itself, country’s means the name used by the country, because ‘countrys’ would be grammatically wrong) the apostrophe in 'country's' indicates possessiveness.

After keeping these things in mind, proofread your article yourself, once. This is done because after editing, your original expression might be warped. Edit it yourself first. After doing it yourself, if you’re still sceptical, you can give it to an editor.

After keeping those things in mind, the skeleton of your article is ready. All that is left is writing it. Happy writing!

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