Saturday, March 31, 2012
Do Your Articles Need Proofreading...and Maybe Even Re-Writing?
None of us are perfect. Even the best of authors will need a little help from time to time. In fact, I will not be surprised if, by the time you reach the end of this comment, you have caught me in a couple of errors, and I have several hundred published articles.
Even so, there are some particular instances in which you may find that you should have someone take a second look at your articles and maybe even re-write them for you.
Let me ask you a few questions:
Do you write and publish articles in English online?
Is some language other than English your native language?
Is your command of such nit-picky things as punctuation, spelling, grammar a little weak?
Do you have to admit that, although you have something valid to say in your articles, you just don't have that "writing thing" that lets you say it easily?
Did you have to answer, "Yes!" to any of those questions?
If so, there is a good chance that your articles can probably benefit from a little review, and possibly re-writing, by someone with a bit more experience and expertise.
Let me tell you about something that I have noticed in the last year or so.
I have several blogs and websites, and, at one time, I would write almost every word on them myself. However, in the last year or so, I have retired and like to take it easy. Although I still am an active blogger and webmaster, I have gotten a little tired of doing all the work myself and have begun using articles from article directories such as EzineArticles.com.
It's pretty much a given fact that I will have to go through several articles on a subject to find the few which will fit into a particular blog or website. I also understand that not everyone who writes articles is that good of a "writer". However, I was still willing to sacrifice a certain amount of technical skill for a good article which conveyed knowledge in an enjoyable manner.
I was a linguist in the U.S. Army, and, having lived and traveled in Europe for years, I understood how an interesting article written by someone whose native language is NOT English might have a few technical errors here or there...yet still be one I might wish to publish anyway.
Saddly, what I was NOT really prepared for was how many good, interesting, and informative articles I would have to skip over simply because the manner in which the author expressed his or her ideas was difficult to interpret...even though written in English.
If you are someone who is writing articles and publishing them in article directories, no doubt your hope is that those articles will be appreciated by others and perhaps will be published on multiple websites. You probably also hope that those articles will establish you as a knowledgeable person on the subject you write about. The ultimate goal of most such articles is generally to generate business by attracting readers to your business.
However, if your articles are being passed over by webmasters and bloggers like me for the reasons I have outlined, then you are expending a lot of time and energy for nothing. Just this morning, I had to skip over a very informative article that I would have liked to publish on my travel blog. Although it was a good article with a lot of first-hand information which my readers could have used, it was written by someone whose native language is NOT English, and, as such, had too many distracting and confusing constructions for me to use it.
Fortunately, there are many services online which will ghost write articles for you, or proofread, rewrite, and sometimes even publish YOUR articles for you.
If you are intelligent and knowledgeable on a subject, but your command of English is about like my command of German, you should probably hire one of these services to do some of this work for you.
You and I know that there is never a guarantee that even the best written, most interesting article will be the one which goes viral and winds up on thousands of other websites. However, your odds of getting your article accepted and published by a webmaster or blogger will be better if the article you DO submit is well written and easy to read.
Even so, there are some particular instances in which you may find that you should have someone take a second look at your articles and maybe even re-write them for you.
Let me ask you a few questions:
Do you write and publish articles in English online?
Is some language other than English your native language?
Is your command of such nit-picky things as punctuation, spelling, grammar a little weak?
Do you have to admit that, although you have something valid to say in your articles, you just don't have that "writing thing" that lets you say it easily?
Did you have to answer, "Yes!" to any of those questions?
If so, there is a good chance that your articles can probably benefit from a little review, and possibly re-writing, by someone with a bit more experience and expertise.
Let me tell you about something that I have noticed in the last year or so.
I have several blogs and websites, and, at one time, I would write almost every word on them myself. However, in the last year or so, I have retired and like to take it easy. Although I still am an active blogger and webmaster, I have gotten a little tired of doing all the work myself and have begun using articles from article directories such as EzineArticles.com.
It's pretty much a given fact that I will have to go through several articles on a subject to find the few which will fit into a particular blog or website. I also understand that not everyone who writes articles is that good of a "writer". However, I was still willing to sacrifice a certain amount of technical skill for a good article which conveyed knowledge in an enjoyable manner.
I was a linguist in the U.S. Army, and, having lived and traveled in Europe for years, I understood how an interesting article written by someone whose native language is NOT English might have a few technical errors here or there...yet still be one I might wish to publish anyway.
Saddly, what I was NOT really prepared for was how many good, interesting, and informative articles I would have to skip over simply because the manner in which the author expressed his or her ideas was difficult to interpret...even though written in English.
If you are someone who is writing articles and publishing them in article directories, no doubt your hope is that those articles will be appreciated by others and perhaps will be published on multiple websites. You probably also hope that those articles will establish you as a knowledgeable person on the subject you write about. The ultimate goal of most such articles is generally to generate business by attracting readers to your business.
However, if your articles are being passed over by webmasters and bloggers like me for the reasons I have outlined, then you are expending a lot of time and energy for nothing. Just this morning, I had to skip over a very informative article that I would have liked to publish on my travel blog. Although it was a good article with a lot of first-hand information which my readers could have used, it was written by someone whose native language is NOT English, and, as such, had too many distracting and confusing constructions for me to use it.
Fortunately, there are many services online which will ghost write articles for you, or proofread, rewrite, and sometimes even publish YOUR articles for you.
If you are intelligent and knowledgeable on a subject, but your command of English is about like my command of German, you should probably hire one of these services to do some of this work for you.
You and I know that there is never a guarantee that even the best written, most interesting article will be the one which goes viral and winds up on thousands of other websites. However, your odds of getting your article accepted and published by a webmaster or blogger will be better if the article you DO submit is well written and easy to read.
Labels: article marketing, article writing, publish articles, writing articles
# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 2:58 PM 
