I’m starting a series titled “Quick Blogging Tips” that will run every Sunday for all of 2008 and hopefully beyond. I’ve also decided to lump this series in with my Goals of 2008 post as well to provide added incentive to stay on track. This series of posts consist of Quick Blogging Tips that will help improve your blog. So without further ado or explanation of an already obvious title here’s the first Quick Blogging Tip:
Get into the habit of spending some time to proofread your posts before you publish them. When I took some time to think about the goals I was going to set out for myself in 2008 I looked through my old posts and noticed that the message I meant to get to the reader wasn’t as clear as I thought it was when I first wrote the post. The way I wrote my posts before was to simply do a very quick 15 second scan to see if there were any glaring problems before I published the post. What I’ve started doing in the past few weeks was to take the time to read through the entire posts and look for ways to improve it.
Here are some examples of the questions I ask myself in the time I spend proofreading:
“Does the opening sentence do a good job of pulling in the reader? Does it explain exactly what the next few paragraphs will be about? Or does it turn the reader off?”
“Does this sentence in the paragraph work best here or should it be moved to the end of the paragraph where it will possibly provide a better transition into the next paragraph of the post?”
Overall I believe that the time I’ve spent in the past few weeks proofreading my posts has greatly improved the overall message I send to the reader. It’s also helped me come up with more ideas for my blog too. I thought of this series for Quick Blogging Tips when I was writing a post about proofreading your posts and found that there wasn’t a lot I could write about the topic, yet I still believe it was something that has improved the posts on my blog and could improve some of my reader’s blogs as well.
How much time do you spend proofreading your posts or do you even proofread them?
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Nice post Chris.
I do alot of proof reading especially that I’m not a professional writer. I still miss some grammar and spelling mistakes though but my post should be better in the coming months as I’ve started to use Firefox when I make a post.
Cheers.
I rely on Microsoft Word and firefox with my posts. Every once in a while, a friend or two reads. But, great ways as well.
Hey, thanks for stopping by my site,
a good post by the way, I am almost always rushing or don’t feel like proof reading but I am getting into the habit of checking over it at least once because I was leaving lots of errors previously.
A site I should put on my blogroll!
See you,
Great blog!
Fabien
Ninja Tip 1 - Commenting
Commenting is a very important part of the blogging process. The blogging world is like one big circle. To get visitors to your site, you must comment on others blogs. They enjoy comments, so they’ll return the favour.
So. How do you comment on a…
Hey Chris!
I read every email or post to my blog 3-6 times each, with breaks in between. I catch most every grammar & spelling error that way.
I gotta tell ya, your post really made me think though; so now I will likely be reading every email, post, article, EVERYTHING even more!
Thanks a lot.
I suppose, over time and with practice, I can get back down to my 3-6 times each…
***sigh***
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
p.s. this comment recieved 4 full reads/edits before posting…
I don’t want anyone to think I’m terminally anal, but I draft my writing in Word and spell check it (and word count). Not just posts and articles, comments too.
Why does a blogger think someone is going to be willing to spend time reading their work, if they themselves can’t be arsed to take the time to ensure it’s correct, and reads well?
I’m not sure exactly when it was that I turned into my parents;-D