Sunday, November 30, 2008

Grammar and Content Writing

Grammar is a very tricky subject when thinking about content writing. Most web writing articles out there will tell you that you always have to use good grammar in your articles. Well, this rule is meant to be broken if you will gain advantages from it. What you will consider good grammar is not necessarily something that your reader will think good grammar. The good news is that you can basically manipulate English grammar in order to gain something. Sometimes the strict rules associated will hinder easy reading. Remember that we are writing for everybody and for the Internet. It is not as we are writing a book that is to be published and used as material in a college. Here are some things that you should consider when writing!

Paste Tense and Present Tense Use

There is one English Grammar rule that says your sentence must continue with Past Tense if it starts with Past Tense. For Instance, if we say that "BBC reported that Malaria was still a problem in the world" it would be correct. If we were to say that "BBC reported that Malaria is still a problem in the world", English grammar would tell us that it is a mistake. Now that particular report meant to say that Malaria is currently still a worldwide problem. Why not say exactly that when we write about it for the Internet? Confusing the reader is never a great idea, especially when talking into account the Basics of Web Content Writing.

Bullet Lists

Now we all know that bullet lists are very good to draw user attention. On the other hand, grammar use tells us that you have are not allowed to use capital letters at the beginning of the listed items and at the end you need to use punctuation. For instance, this bullet list would be correct:

We Like to Write About:
- news;
- gadgets;
- fitness;
- nutrition.

Now let us imagine we would write everything like this:

We like to Write About:
- News
- Gadgets
- Fitness
- Nutrition

We are basically expressing bullet ideas. What need is there for punctuation? Also, is it really necessary to NOT use capital letters? The truth is that punctuation is distracting when reading on the Internet. Do not use small letters and use capital letters and no punctuation in web content writing.

First Sentence of a Paragraph

Now we are used to a structure of an article that is based on Introduction, Content and Conclusion. While this is always correct, the paragraph itself is never really considered in the good building of an article. Always start every single paragraph with the most important sentence you want to highlight and then motivate it. This will keep interest alive and will help you getting constant readers.

1 comment:

Reviewer Jeff said...

Nice blog! and the posts are worth reading. Can we exchange links?