Earning Money

Professionalism…That’s a word that can scare a lot of people, but it’s one of those words that people take for granted. To be a professional, there are certain things that you must do. In the business world, wearing a suit and having a business card for whatever it is you do might give you that professional look. Showing respect to your employer, following certain rules, whatever you may call it, all of these are signs of professionalism. However, how do bloggers keep a certain professionalism alive?

That is a bit more difficult because all the reader gets is what we give them: our words. But, there is a way to differentiate one blog from the next. It’s not what you write about or who makes more money. What you will find is, 9/10, the blog that has the better written content is going to have the most money earned. And, in my opinion, better written content goes hand in hand with grammatically correct content. But, one of the problems with people is that they type really fast. I, for one, make tons of mistakes and have to go back time and time again to correct the mistakes I make because I am such a fast typer.

Because of the speed of many typists these days and because people just don’t know what to pick up, I compiled a series of simple tips. They may appear to be tremendously elementary, but I had a professor on Thursday say, “I am very pleased with the lack of grammatical errors in your presentations. In previous years, they have been littered with errors.” I’m in college and people are still making the errors.

Dealing with the three 2’s:

• To: Used when describing where you went or what you are going to do, for example. “I walked to the store. I went to the mall. I am going to write a blog post. I want to own that television.”
• Too: When you, as well, are going to do that along with another person. “I walked my dog too. I spent my money too. I wrote a blog post too.”
• Two: That’s the number two.

Dealing with those Blasted Nouns:

• People, Places, Things are obviously going to be capitalized. “Anthony Smith. Washington D.C. Airplane.”
• You also capitalized titles. For instance: “President Bush. Prime Minister Blair.” When it goes with a name, capitalize it. But, if you’re saying “The president of the club,” that does not get capitalized. It has to be specific to get a capital letter.

Periods, Commas, Semi-Colons and Colons:

• A period ends the sentence. Simple as that. But, you may see people use ‘…’ That is a way to trail off a thought. “I really want to go to the zoo…” Almost as if you are thinking at the same time. I sometimes abuse this myself.
• Commas are used in lists. “I want a new bike, a helmet, knee pads, and a water bottle.”
• Semi-colons are used to connect two similar thoughts into one big sentence. “I am going to go to the zoo; although, I am very scared of the lion.” Another thing to keep in mind is the use of words like: although, though, yet, etc. It goes: first thought; (although, yet, though, etc), second thought. That exact set up.
• Colons are used when you’re listing something. “Here are the three points I want to discuss: point 1, point 2, point 3.”

A Few Simple Tips:

• If all else fails, throw it into the spell check.
• Read it over…If it sounds choppy, fix it.
• Take the time to proof read your stuff. A simple re-read can make all the difference. And my best advice is to read it backwards. Your mind sometimes thinks something is correct because you wrote it; however, if you read it backwards, your mind will catch the errors.
• One final pet peeve of mine has to do with punctuation and quotation marks. Punctuation goes INSIDE the quotation marks, not outside the quotes. “I am going to the zoo!” yelled Maria. “I want to eat some candy,” said Mark. As you can see, the punctuation is on the inside. That’s where it belongs.

These are just some tips on grammar. Tomorrow, I will write another post on other tips that I think are really important. One of the biggest ones for tomorrow is one that I break all the time and I really need to fix. But, if you take these tips and you start to learn basic grammar, you will find a tremendous change in your blog posts. I know that if a blog post is written with above moderate grammar, I will stick around and read it. So, take the time and really make sure your blog posts have good grammar. Keep the professionalism alive.

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