It doesn’t matter whether you’re a famous bestselling author or just an ordinary blogger downtown; there exists no perfect writing. You may boast around telling people you have been writing for years. However, you can never brag about flawless writing.
Every first draft is a turmoil of thoughts and ideas. That is why you should always consider editing your material. The process of writing is more like writing – revising – revising – revising – then publishing.
Also read: 4 Best Blogging Habits to Cultivate for better Productivity
Lucky are those who can afford some professional’s help with their article in terms of making necessary adjustments until it all reads smoothly. But in most cases, a writer is the same person to edit his own works. It is nothing but easy to hate the process. Anyhow, you can’t just slack and let things be while others are refining their writing. Also, it’s better to improve now than get whipped by all aspiring writers who are learning the ways to make money online from John Calub’s Blog.
Today, you’ll be introduced with non-failing tips things that will make your next editing easier than before.
Avoid using expletives
Simply put, expletives are words or phrases that do not add any structural or grammatical meaning to the sentence. These words and phrases are often referred to as empty words, meaningless phrases, or redundant pairs because they do not add any information to the sentence.
Here are some examples of expletives:
really | generally |
actually | specific |
virtually | undoubtedly |
basically | obviously |
practically | truly |
particular | clearly |
Expletives only weaken the sentence construction as they shift the emphasis away from the true drivers of the sentence. If you don’t want your readers to get lost, then refrain from using expletives. If you can’t, choose to at least minimize usage.
Make use of stronger verbs
Writers are fond of making their articles lengthier, perhaps due to word number requirements. This practice, however, can hurt you more than help you.
A writer weakens an action in his writing when he writes “she is writing” instead of ‘she writes’, ‘she was enjoying’ when he could simply write ‘she enjoyed.’
Refrain from using weak adjectives
Remember that the aim here is to create a blog that readers will easily understand. You shouldn’t make their reading harder by bombarding them with unnecessary words.
Most often, words like very and really follow weak adjectives: really good, very bad, really big, and very beautiful. This only shows that a writer doesn’t know an exact word to use instead – Some examples of recommended adjectives are terrible, great, huge and gorgeous. These are more descriptive in manner.
Also read: The Secret Sauce to Writing Compelling Content
Even worse than using weak adjectives is telling your readers what is not instead of stating what is. For instance:
It’s not that fun. – It’s boring.
Writing is not hard. – Writing is easy.
Limit nominalization
Nominalization is a type of word construction in which a verb and an adjective is used as a noun. It occurs when a writer chooses a lengthier set of words instead of simpler ones. This tends to pad out your sentence.
Take a look at this simple sentence:
The committee will investigate the problem.
Now, here’s its version using nominalization:
The committee will perform an investigation into the problem.
When given an option that includes verbs and nouns, take the verb; it will add action and a more powerful tone to your writing.
Don’t be verbose
People tend to only skim contents. As a matter of fact, a study from Nielsen revealed that “though people spend more time on pages with more words and more information, they only spend 4.4 seconds more for each additional 100 words.”
Also read: 15 Time-Saving Tools for Content Development
Do you remember getting sleepy from those long and boring discussions back in school? Your professor could have just explained the lessons in fewer words but he insisted on making it difficult for the class. If you hated those, remember that readers probably feel the same about very verbose articles.
| About the Guest Author:
Edwin Deponte is a motivational writer who is also passionate about Social Marketing. He believes in others’ abilities and tends to bring out people’s hidden potentials through his words of inspirations and motivational articles.
