10 Tips To Polish Your Articles

Writing an article is actually the easy part. The difficulty comes in employing these 10 tips to polish your article so that is it neat, professional, provides entertainment and information as well as being well written and formatted. Writing articles for online publication means that you have to strip the article down a great deal in order to polish it to perfection.
1. Proofread – Proofreading doesn’t just mean glancing over the article. Try reading it aloud, or even reading it backwards. This will allow grammar, spelling and just basic syntax errors to be noticed before you move on.
2. Run a spelling and grammar check software program. Don’t count on your personal idea of how to spell a word, or how to organize a sentence. But on the other hand don’t allow yourself to depend on software, because many times it may suggest something that isn’t what you should do, and it may miss words that are used incorrectly, because they are actually spelled right. Words like weight and wait, descent and decent can be skipped over by a software spelling and grammar check.
3. Bold Title and Subheadings – The presence of a bolded title and subheadings helps break up the solid wall of text that an article can appear to be when viewed online. This makes it easier for readers to read online.
4. Bullets and Numbered lists are your friend. Again these formatting options make it easier for readers.
5. Check your word count. Most writers could write several hundred words above what is needed to convey the information in an online article. Cut out the fluff and keep it simple.
6. Check spacing and punctuation. It is important that your article looks uniform and fluid without needless commas, or extra exclamation points. The rule for writing online articles is K.I.S.S. which means Keep It Simple Stupid.
7. Save the article throughout your editing and polishing process or else you risk losing all the painstaking changes you’ve made.
8. Add images when possible to further polish your article into a complete work.
9. Do a keyword check. While online writing means using a keyword throughout the article you don’t want to make your article stilted and stuffed with keywords, the keyword should be used naturally. Change some around if you have too many keywords, and add some if you need more.
10. Proofread one final time checking not only the way the words flow, but also spelling, usage, punctuation, formatting and the overall feel of the article.
Taking the time to polish your article can make the difference between a successful article that is searched and viewed thousands of times, and one that is only read by your friends and family to show their support.