27
Aug
I’m sure you wouldn’t have to look too hard to find enough writing errors in my Blog to sink a small fishing boat…so I’m riding shotgun on this one while my girlfriend (who’s an English teacher) gives me some advice. In her opinion, obvious errors in an article are as distracting as a really ugly font or a bad color scheme. Here is her top ten list of easily corrected writing errors.
- Spelling. It might sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many people let their enthusiasm for posting overwhelm the necessity of a decent spell check.
- Punctuation. As glaringly obvious as this point may be, if you’re distracted by what you’re writing and forget to check your work over, full stops and commas are the first things to fall off the back of the article. If you don’t have the correct punctuation the sense of your writing can be affected. Have you heard the story about the Panda who eats, shoots and leaves? Did the Panda have a nice meal of bamboo foliage, or did it consume its food, kill the waiter and run away? It’s all about putting the right punctuation in the right place.
- Apostrophes. These deserve their own bullet point. Here’s a really basic list of rules.
- Use an apostrophe if the word is a contraction. (If it’s made smaller by taking out some letters, the apostrophe stands in for the missing letters) E.g. Can not becomes can’t.
- Use an apostrophe to show possession. E.g. The cat’s toys. (The toys belong to the cat) If there are multiple cats then you have to shift the apostrophe to the other side of the ’s’. So it would read: The cats’ toys.
- NEVER use an apostrophe to show plural. E.g. Apple’s for sale should actually read Apples for sale. NO apostrophe.
- Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession - they don’t need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns.”
- Slang. As tempting as it is to write as you speak, even with the idea of appealing to a certain audience, slang is clunky to read, tends to reduce your assumed authority on a topic and may alienate more people than it attracts on the basis that they have no idea what you’re talking about.
- Followed swiftly by the dreaded text (txt) language. Lts of ppl cnt rd dat txt lang, cos its 2 abv.
- Circumlocution. The word that I have aforementioned is a term that is not commonly used and in fact, not generally known by many people but it serves to define a regularly occurring phenomenon in blog writing that has the tendency to detract from good ideas and genuinely favorable writing by filling the readers receptors with an overwhelming and therefore unacceptable amount of words. Or…Circumlocution: the use of more words than necessary to express an idea.
- Tense. Are you writing your article in the present, past or future? Any of them are fine, but make sure you pick one and stick with it.
- Sense. This might seem like silly advice to give to anyone over the age of 12, but you need to make sure that what you have written, from the individual sentences to the bigger paragraphs actually makes sense. Read it out loud…sometimes your eyes will miss it but it will usually sound wrong to your ears if you’ve messed up somewhere.
- Use features like CAPITALS, italics and bold effectively. They are brilliant to provide emphasis but if you are too liberal with them then they lose their impact.
- Nobody ever said formal or correct writing couldn’t be funny, clever or individual. These common mistakes distract your reader but correcting them shouldn’t mean that you sacrifice your style. If you clean up the minor errors in your writing then it means that what you’re actually saying will become more attractive to read.
22 Responses to “Ten Writing Errors That Makes Your Blog Less Good”
- Further Reading » Blog-Op
- 98 Blog Tips for a Lazy Sunday
- Skype Cracks » Blog Archive » 98 Blog Tips for a Lazy Sunday
- My Thought Spot»Blog Archive » Great writing tips
- 16 Top Tips To Tune Your Writing Skills : Pingable.org | Blogging & Design
- The Great List Of Ways To Get Traffic To Your Blog : New Internet Media @ Pingable.org
Leave a Reply
These excellent tips cover many of the common errors I see regularly - not just in blogs, but also in manuscripts and business documents I edit.
The irony of the grammatically incorrect title emphasizes your point.
Whether it was irony or a deliberate set up, if your English teacher really checked that title, give her a hundred lines and detention
Good post and your title does actually illustrate very typical errors that are seen every day online. Although I may be guilty of mangling the King’s English from time to time, I do wish some people would try harder, particularly those who claim to be “writers” and then go on to demonstrate very poor ability at even a basic level. Ouch.
I just wanted to make a comment to say the the title of this article was well and truly written poorly to emphasize the point. I am glad that people have found it a useful resource.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but there’s an error in punctuation in the Punctuation paragraph.
That just cracks me up.
The panda did not eat IT IS food. It’s = it is.
You meant to say the panda eats ITS food.
Out of all errors on blogs, that must be my biggest pet peeve. And the fact that it showed up, even here, just shows how easy it is to miss things in proofreading. Maybe “it’s” needs its own bullet point under the apostrophe section!
I love the points made here, however! Very, very good ones.
Lisa
Heh. Love the headline. I’m totally guilty of #4. I’ve wondered if I alienate people from other cultures, but so far, no. I’m having too much fun to worry about it right now, at any rate. These are good tips, though.
@ Lisa - Thanks for the correction and good spotting. In our attempt to simplify the use of the apostrophe we messed up our example. The rule which we messed up was “Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession - they don’t need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns.” I am adding this to the list.
Hey! thanks for visiting Zuggu, it on beta and not yet finished by I really appreciate your cooperation adding your articles and I hope it helps you with the traffic to your wonderful blog!
@Today Is Not Over Yet - I am always interested in social media sites!
Simon, about your comment:
“I just wanted to make a comment to say the the title of this article was well and truly written poorly to emphasize the point. I am glad that people have found it a useful resource.”
This displays the same type of error as the title. ‘well and truly X’ is the idiom, not ‘well and truly adverb x’ or ‘x adverb’.
I am not impressed.
“If you don’t have the correct punctuation the sense of your writing can be effected.”
And if you use the verb ‘effect’ when you mean ‘affect’, that’s going to screw things up too!
Thanks for the correction Frogwalloper, this article has been read over 1500 times and you were the first to spot that mistake. Smack, the poor grammar in the comments is my fault, not the author of this article. I guess this sort of article is asking to be picked over in such ways. Thanks for visiting though!
Interesting read! Great blog keep up the good work
Thanks for this post! It’s a good refresher for all of us, including me.
But never forget: we all make mistakes.
wow, great tips indeed. I feel like writing is very iimportant for the success of blogs, please find this blog, where the writing tips and tricks are shared by the blogger.
Good Writing
U d0nt w4n7 us p0s71ng 0f th4′ 514ng1zzl13 or 1337n355? 5h1zn17, 1m 5urpr153d!
(You don’t want us posting slang or text speak? S***, I’m surprised!”
Great post. Very informative for all the writers and for the aspiring ones. This can be a review for them.
A big help for the bloggers and web copywriters.
I really like the number two tip part.