8 Simple Editing and Writing Tips That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful

Posted on by

As a blogger, you are prone to grammatical errors, after all, you’re not perfect. In this article, we will attempt to show you how you can proofread your work without any hustle.

It can be difficult to trace your work as you write but thanks to the world of online content making, there are products out there that can help you in the editing process. Though these tools may be a handful, we will highlight the most important ones, along with some tips, and hope that they are of value to you.

1. Mistakes Are Not The Same

Writers need to understand that writing for an online audience is not the same as writing for academic reasons. When you write for the web, you can make some mistakes that are tolerable unlike when writing academic literature.

33 unusual writing editing tips
33 unusual writing editing tips

There is a very lengthy and interesting thread at Quora, Some one asked How can I improve my writing skills? and more than 100 people answered. You should read this thread.

When you make a mistake when writing for the web, make sure that you are able to validate that mistake. You can break the rules but you can only do so if it will prove to be effective.

During the early days, bloggers misspelled a word so as to get higher rankings, those days are long gone thanks to Google’s intelligence. However, you can still misspell a word if you intend for it to have an effect or if you have an intention of inventing a new word.

2. Difference between Proofreading and Editing

Most people confuse the two concepts and we are here to educate you on the difference between the two.

Editing is when you revise the content of your article in regards to the structure and language while proofreading is when you want to make sure that the grammar, punctuation, and spelling of your content is up to par.

Editing vs proofreading by Manu Mathur
Editing vs proofreading

Now that you know the difference between the two, it’s important that you take into account that whatever you’ll be doing will either be one of the two and should adhere to the rules that govern each aspect.

3. Do Your Research

It’s not acceptable to just pick a topic and start writing about it without having to do research on it. You have to spend enough time looking up the topic and see what people are saying about it and be able to capitalize on that.

You have to judge whether the topic is relevant to your brand or it’s up to current events. At this time, you also want to make sure that you have the correct spelling of names and places. Any statistical data that you decide to put up should also be legit.

4. Review Your Work

This is one of the most important aspects when it comes to blogging. It can either make or break you. The number of people that you engage in your content is dependent on the natural flow of your content and if it makes sense.

Read your article out loud so as to weed out any anomalies that may occur in the document. Chances are high that while doing this you may be able to hear the sentences that are harmful to your content thus you will be able to remove them from the article.

Reviewing your work also gives you a perspective of how your article sounds to the reader and if they will be able to enjoy it.

5. Get Supporting Material

Once you’ve done your research, you want to accompany your result with some supportive references that will give your content more weight. These resources could have been gotten during your research.

By attaching these resources, you are giving your article more credit and making sure that your audience trusts it. This will also increase your SEO ranking. A word of caution though, when attaching these resources, make sure that they are from trusted sources and that they are based on the current finding and not something from 50 years ago!

6. Copyright Free

Once you’ve created your content, you want to make sure that it’s original or no one has ever created content that’s exactly the same as yours, thus making it copyright free. If your content is the same as that of some other person, you may be liable for plagiarism.

To make sure that your content is original, make use of plagiarism check tools which are so many online with Copyscape being one of the most popular.

PlagScan and quetext are two free online Plagiarism Checker services, We have been using these services for a while and we found them great.

This tool will cross check with tons of other work that are found on the web and will show you which parts exactly that are similar to other pieces from other people.

Also, if your content uses images and videos or any other referenced materials, you need to check if they are copyrighted or they are free to use. There are several sites out there that offer free images that can be of value to you. A video created by the content writers themselves is okay to use.

Don’t use other people’s work without their permission as this may land you in legal woes.

7. Proofread More Than Once

Successful bloggers review their work more than once. Go through your work thoroughly, focus on the flow of your thoughts on the article, the punctuation, and grammar. Don’t leave any stone unturned. By doing so, you will be sure to uncover some things that you might have overlooked while writing or when you first wrote the article.

We have been using Grammarly to easily find and fix spelling and grammar mistakes, We have installed Grammarly’s chrome extenstion that works great with WordPress editor and if you will make speling mistakes, Grammarly will highlight it and give you suggestions.

Do not be in a rush while reviewing, take your time and you can even employ a set of fresh eyes from your friends to help you in reviewing your piece of work. This will give you a fresh perspective on how your work is and you can be able to make the necessary changes.

8. Do Not Rely On Spell Check

Many people rely on their word processor’s spell check. They see it as the final line of defense against spell checks. This not true at all! Relying on your word processor’s spell check can land you in some serious trouble as it’s not completely accurate and it overlooks some things.

Always use professional tools for proofreading and to find and fix spelling and grammar mistakes. Grammarly is one of the best tools for writers and bloggers.

check grammar and spelling mistakes witg Grammarly free app
check grammar and spelling mistakes witg Grammarly free add-on for Chrome and Widnows

There are some online tools, such as Grammarly, that can assist you with this and can generate some suggestions for you, some may be correct and other not so much, none the less nothing beats the human eye thus you should always go through your article yourself at all times.

Conclusion

As a blogger, you want to make sure that all your work is free from any grammatical errors that may paint you as an incompetent blogger, go through your document yourself to make sure that everything is perfect, using your own eyes will beat any piece of software out there.

Be sure to proofread your content, it will save you a lot of headaches. What tools and tips have worked for you? Please share with us!

About Author: Lori Wade

Lori Wade is a freelance content writer for Thriving Writer who is interested in a wide range of spheres from education and online marketing to entrepreneurship. She is also an aspiring tutor striving to bring education to another level like we all do. If you are interested in writing, you can find her on Twitter or Google+ or find her on other social media. Read and take over Lori’s useful insights!

3 responses on “8 Simple Editing and Writing Tips That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful

  1. Rana

    Awesome article with a lot of great takeaways for improving my content writing skills.This is a great routine for writing content that is not only SEO optimized but also converting with the focus on the readers of the content.

  2. Samiullah Khan

    Good points made, but for person like me. I just want my word or blog post out I can’t go through all the points.
    Secondly the body font is very small on this website or may be it’s the font problem which are making the text squishy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *