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"Quality is Job 1"

Take the time to pore over your blog posting for grammatical errors and misspellings before you hit the <post> button.

Everyone makes such mistakes once in a while and it will serve you well to fix typos (typographical errors), punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors in your posting. It is "easy on the eye" (my mother's phrase for a good-looking man) to read well punctuated, properly spelled text. And it will keep your reader engaged. That's what you want, right? To keep your reader interested so they will read more and more from your blog.

Here are some tips on writing good English in blog postings that make blog postings easy to read:

• A paragraph is a container for an idea or a point you are making. When, for example, you go from talking about how to assemble a fishing rod kit to how to gut a fish, start a new paragraph. Pick up any magazine article and see how a good author will start a new paragraph when he or she moves to a new idea.
• Capitalization: Begin sentences with a capital letter. Although your reader may see a period at the end of the previous sentence, it "makes their eye do work" when they see the next sentence begin with a small letter. A capital letter reinforces structure and makes it easier to continue reading.
• Brevity: When four words will say the same as six words, use four words. That is according to George Orwell. (See George's material below).
• The fancy English that might have earned you an A+ on a school essay, often serves in a blog to make something sound more complicated than it needs to.
• Three short sentences, one long one, three short sentences, one long one, etc.. That is the pattern I try to stick to if possible. The three short sentences build background for the one long sentence. That structure has worked well for me and makes what I write easier to read; it builds a rhythm that your readers will appreciate, even if they never notice it consciously.
  "It was a warm day. The duck packed his suitcase. The hen took her purse. Between the two of them, they would spend the next four days crossing the big desert, leaving the security of the farm behind them forever".
• Take your time. Writing good English is worth the effort. Everything you write on the web might be around long after you are dead, so when your grandchildren read it, you want them to be proud of you. The way I look at it, if poor English is good enough, you're probably wasting your time making the posting in the first place.
• Go back later and edit. A night's sleep can sharpen your eye for errors. If you have the ability to re-edit old postings, go back and revisit them when you have spare time.

George Orwell's writing tips*:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

   1. What am I trying to say?
   2. What words will express it?
   3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
   4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

   1. Could I put it more shortly?
   2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

   1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
   2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
   3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
   4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. (Liam's example: "My homework was eaten by the dog" versus "The dog ate my homework", respectively)
   5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
   6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.  

* From Orwell's essay“Politics and the English Language”

Jerry Pournelle's advice

I heard this a long time ago and for the life of  me, I can't find a link to it. If you want to become a writer, Jerry says, do the following:

• Go away and write a million words. That's actually about a half dozen novels or more. That's a lot of writing, but will give you the practice you need.
• Forget about shortcuts to becoming a writer. Writing classes, Writing for Dummies, (even this blog entry) are all fine and dandy, but practice is what you need. (Did I mention the million words).

(I hope I got Jerry's points right - someone post a comment if not or if there's more). Jerry has been writing professionally since the 1960s.

Liam

Tags: blog, grammar, punctuation, spelling