A proven fact, article writing and marketing are a free way to get the word out and therefore drive traffic to your website or blog. Traffic, as all internet marketers know, is the lifeblood of your web business. You can have the most beautiful website in the world complete with intricate Flash integration and stunning graphics to present your product or service, plus compelling user interaction, but if no one sees it, it’s just useless fodder in the vast expanse of the world. Cyberspace.

But is there more to article writing than simply being a vehicle to drive potential customers to your site? There certainly is if you take the time to consider that an article is representative of who you and your company are.

However, it is truly surprising that so many people do not take this key component into account when they sit down in front of their computer to write an article. Instead, they simply proceed to note down random thoughts and attempted benefit descriptions in a feeble and notoriously hasty attempt to simply jot something down “on paper” and publish it in the hope that it will be enough to accomplish the goal of to convince. the reader who continues to delve into the subject, vis-à-vis clicking on the website is worth it!

If one were to take the time and expense to produce a newspaper or magazine ad for their company’s product or service, you can bet it would be well scored, formatted and edited before being released to the public for viewing and analysis. After all, you are marketing your company and, in most cases, at a substantial cost. Why would an article be any different?

It shouldn’t, and even if it’s not directly costing you money, there is still a cost in the form of how unfavorably readers of your article may look at it if it’s poorly written and presented.

Here are some critical areas where you should analyze your articles:

spelling and grammar

We have become a society of instant gratification, instant results, and instant spread. Email has become fertile ground for a perceived ignorance of the basics of formatting, spelling, punctuation, and grammar; in short, a forum for the general slaughter of the English language.

Instead of becoming a replacement, but still retaining the proper fundamentals of writing as it is supposed to be, as in traditional letter writing by hand or typewriter, email has spawned a generation of shortcuts, grammar killers and spelling killers that make English teachers want to throw up. and make the general public look like a bunch of illiterate jerks, even if they’re not. The purpose of email at its core is to communicate faster than waiting for snail mail, not to destroy the entire English language, and it has become to spoil everything we do when it comes to forms of written communication.

We won’t even get into instant text messaging as I don’t want to 2 take 2 hours 2 try 2 d ci per it in 2 something you wld instd ok?

Anyone who reads this article will know exactly what I am talking about because we have all seen or even been guilty of composing and moving these miserable excuses to “write letters” to our friends, family or the ultimate transgression; business partners, business contacts and the worst offense; Communication with our customers and items is no different!

If you’re going to write quality articles and even emails, you need to keep the good principles and fundamentals of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting intact. There really is no excuse for anything but the right thing to do in view of the fact that along with all the instant assimilation of information and dispersal of it associated with the Internet comes instant online tools like spell checkers, dictionaries, encyclopedias and thesauri. . .

Punctuation

Even with modern computer technology there are problems with certain punctuation marks. In particular, the apostrophe key can wreak havoc. Have you ever seen someone type the word you want and the apostrophe is missing or replaced by a strange character?

Here’s a technical explanation for this: Each character you type appears on the screen as a letter, number, or mark that you understand. Basically, however, each character is represented by a number that is part of the ASCII code. (ASCII=American Standard Code for Information Interchange). The code is a 7-bit binary number and the combination of 1 and 0 allows up to 128 characters. These are letters (upper and lower case), numbers, and standard punctuation marks, diacritics, etc. One would think that this would allow for even more complicated punctuation (eg “curvy quotes” instead of “straight” quotes), except that a few dozen codes are used for computer instructions.

Extended ASCII and Unicode are two of the codes that people have produced to cover less common marks: copyright, trademark, etc.

“Curly” quotes do not fit in standard ASCII. When a program like Microsoft Word uses smart quotes (it can be set to do this automatically), or to convert 2 hyphens to an em dash, it looks great on screen or on paper. But when you send this file to a program that doesn’t recognize Extended ASCII or Unicode, you get bad results.

When you see an email in which a shortened word has been converted to gibberish, it is the result of the current program trying to translate other programs’ preferred code into its own.

So the short answer is to use straight quotes if you want to be safe, or better yet try to use less abbreviated words and incorporate writing that uses the traditional long version. You’ll never know how much better this looks You’ll never know how much better this looks, until you see it!

formatting

Equally important in presenting your articles professionally is formatting them correctly. I’m not going to go into every aspect of formatting like bullets, numbering, tabs, etc. in this article, but if you don’t do anything else, use paragraphs correctly. A paragraph must be unified, coherent and well developed. Paragraphs unify around a main point, and all sentences in the paragraph must clearly relate to that point in some way. The main idea of ​​the paragraph should be supported with specific information that develops or discusses the main idea in more detail. There is nothing worse than an entire article written in one giant paragraph and trust me, I have seen plenty written like this.

In summary; your articles represent you and your company. It should not only be a matter of course for the proper use of everything we have discussed, but also a matter of pride in the way you present yourself and your product, service and company. I know that I personally see anything written to sell or move me emotionally or financially that is poorly presented and I bet most people see it the same way, so practice and initiate professionalism in your article writing at all times if you want. make a good impression and get your target viewers to visit your website or business and buy your products and services.