Yesterday, I talked about thirteen tips to writing with better grammar. I spoke about commas, nouns, semi-colons, and numerous other things to create thirteen different methods to increase your grammatical efficiency. What I want to do today is create some more tools that will allow for you to better increase your blog’s appearance.
As I hinted towards yesterday, one of the things that I was going to touch on was something that I do all the time and that is the use of huge paragraphs. The truth is, there have been times when I would keep typing in a paragraph until it was the only paragraph I could see in the text box. Frankly, that’s not a good method to use when writing blog posts. A few tips to writing better paragraphs are these:
- A paragraph should have a minimum of five sentences. Sometimes there are fewer, but overall, five is a good minimum.
- Each paragraph is its own topic. If you are talking about the nucleus of a cell and then you want to talk about the mitochondria, make a new paragraph.
- If you feel that a paragraph is going on forever, consider breaking that one topic up into smaller topics to try and limit the size of the paragraph. Keep in mind, no one wants to read huge blocks which is why bulleted lists are effective.
- Try and start a paragraph with an introductory sentence. Let them know what it is about. This does not have to be elaborate. Going along with my nucleus/mitochondria idea, you could say something like this: To effectively function and work, the cell requires energy which comes from the power house otherwise known as the mitochondria. Voila, you have told me what the paragraph is about. When someone is skimming, this makes for a great tool to get people to find the information they want fast.
- In the same breath, end your paragraphs with a concluding sentence. With the above example, this might work: Therefore, without the nucleus, the advanced cells would be unable to function. It lets you know that the nucleus is the brain of the cell with that one short sentence.
The thing to keep in mind when creating paragraphs is you want them to be full of enough information that the reader gets what they need, but not so much information that the reader is bored. And, I will be honest, finding that happy middle can take time, but it is something all writers should develop. If you take the extra few minutes to think out what you are writing, you’ll also find that your blog posts just look better. I know mine do when I take that extra time.
Something I have noticed that I try to do and other people try to do as well is use bullets. I think, though, that people sometimes use them too much and that can destroy their effectiveness. In the above list of bullets, I went on to talk about different points and then went into detail about them. Now, I kept them in bullets because none of those points were going to be good paragraphs alone. But, sometimes, if you are just going to list something, it works better to keep it in the paragraph. “I have to go to the book store, the grocery store, the restaurant, and the clothing store.” That is more effective than bulleting each place you need to attend.
One thing to keep in mind when you are writing is the level of your reader. This is not exactly a grammar error, but it is something writers tend to forget. I am a science major and when I go for my pHd, it will be expected that I write with scientific words and terminology that would confuse someone who just takes an interest in science. But, the level of my reader when in graduate school will be much higher than the average science nerd. If you are blogging, you want to ensure that you are not throwing out huge words. Sometimes, it is best to keep things at a basic high school level because that is a level most people feel comfortable reading.
If you ever take the time to read a newspaper, very rarely are you going to find words that make you go, “what?!” The reason for this is the editors understand that if the content is too confusing, they will put the paper down and also never buy the paper again. I’m not saying be dumb. I’m suggesting you convey your thoughts in a method that allows for the general population to understand whether they are English professors or people whose first language is not English.
If you take the tips that I’ve provided in this blog post as well as yesterday’s, you’ll find that your writing skills increase tremendously. I’m not an expert when it comes to grammar and I am sure I conveyed the information in a way that probably confused some of my readers and if that is the case, please ask me a question. But, the thing to remember is that it is incredibly important to effectively get your words from your head to paper in a clean, organized, and grammatically correct method. If you have to write a report for your company, you don’t want to write one that has spelling mistakes.
Whether you have problems with commas and semi-colons, or you’re like me and you ramble on in paragraphs and make them longer than they need to be, sometimes a quick brush up on your grammar skills is all it takes to go from an average blogger to a great blogger. Take the time to really appreciate the skills that you’re developing as a blogger because as time goes on, you’re only going to get better. Blogging is fun, but for there to be success, I think there needs to be that professionalism and it comes from having great grammar.
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