Five Blogging Tips

It doesn’t matter how often we’ve been blogging and writing there are some common faults that we all fall prey to.  The following is a list of some of the things that can slow your writing down and in the end even turn readers off from finishing some of your blogs. On the other hand, polish up some of the skills that are mentioned here and you’ll go a long way to getting repeat readers.

Sentence Length: Long rambling sentences turn readers off. It’s better if the length is short and conveys one or more closely connected ideas.  Even if you have several ideas in one sentence try to connect them all up to the same subject.  Make sure the language is simple concrete and you can’t go wrong.

Paragraphs: A paragraph should only be two or three sentences because short paragraphs simplify the idea and they look more inviting right off the bat than a large block of text that only promises to blog the reader down. The more you practice writing short concise sentences and getting right to the point of what you mean, the easier it will be to put together short paragraphs.

Active Versus Passive.  You want your sentences to have vigor and strength and that’s why you want to take the active form of the verb to the passive. Remember that The blogger wrote well makes much better sense than Writing well was one of the aims the blogger strove to achieve.

Verbs Ending In ize. The idea here is to write well and to do that you’ll need to know something about being specific and concise with the English language.  Many of the verbs ending in ize are both pompous and ungainly. Many of them are even unnecessary or misleading. For example hospitalize is ambiguous because it means both to send to the hospital and admit to the hospital at the same time.

Jargon. Depending on what kind of blogger you are, writing jargon should be done with care.  This inside language of a profession or some other specialist group is what the careful writer is very cautious about using. The following sentence is a good example where an everyday word could replace the jargon.

“The bullet lodged in the cerebrum,” the doctor said.

For all purposes here the jargon (cerebrum) can be replaced by the word brain.

Overall it’s the job of the blogger to sharpen up their skills as a writer so that they get their point across in the least amount of words to the most people.  That means that you should have a keen ear and eye towards polishing up the tools that you use in the English language.

Words are your craft when you’re a blogger.  That means you should always be looking for ways to express yourself in better and more concise ways so that you can gain a bigger readership. One of the best ways to do that is to continually test your knowledge of the English language.

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr
Posted on January 3rd, 2010 and filed under Blogging
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