Blogging: No English Major Required, But.

byburtond86

311 followers

9 years ago

When you hear the word "writing," some of your minds may go back to your stiff, drill sergeant english teacher who critiqued your papers so much so it almost made you want to become a mute then to ever try to communicate with this thing called language on paper ever again...

Fortunately for us, blogging is an evolution of the rules.

If you are one who's never considered yourself to be a great writer, and that is the ONLY thing stopping you from blogging let me just say...

The rules doesn't necessarily apply here per se. Or rather, the rules have evolved.

When blogging, you can allow your personality to show. How you speak in real life is the tone you want to have in your blogs as well. This can include slang, use of emojis and so on. It gives you and your site personality, and allows others to connect with you and your writing style.

If you can speak, you can blog.

With that being said, there are still some basics that you want to strive to keep at all cost...

Spelling.

We live in the age of text messaging and social media which have conditioned us to speak in short bits, almost like communication tourette. Over time, it has dumb down our ability to create complete thoughts within written form; we no longer spell words the way they were intended because we now only have 140 characters to get our point across.

Let's just say, when my God son gave me a paper of his for me to review and I noticed he was spelling words the way he would text them, I knew something was wrong.

The line between casual text and essays have been severely blurred. It's true that you do not need an english degree to become a blogger, and you are allowed a more relaxed grammar in the tone of your article...

but spelling is very important.

I am notorious for typing faster than I think, and often times I find many errors such as grammar, punctuation and of course spelling. I am actually quite a stickler about punctuation, but that is apart of who I am as a writer personally. Even if you're not as anal as I am, It is still very important to provide the best reading experience for your audience as possible.

So proof read your articles before publishing AT LEAST 3 times just to make sure you caught all of your spelling errors.

I say this because I have a cousin who is in a very prestigious school. When he read a blog, he is IMMEDIATELY turned off by an article if it contains too many spelling errors. It almost gives the impression that the content was rushed and not well thought out or planned. It also disrupts the flow of the read because the reader now have to pause for a split second and insert the word that should have been there. Worst of all, it can give the impression that you the author do not care about what you are writing about because you didn't even take the time to proof read; which may hurt your trust and or creditability with them.

Do not get checking for grammatical, punctual, and spelling errors confused to mean you need to use eloquent speech. Keep your audience in mind and don't write over their heads (unless of course you are aiming for the philosophers of society).

You may not catch everything every time, (I know I sure don't) but make the effort to present the best and most polished presentation you can; your content is worth reading and it will be a shame for it to be discarded over something as minor as spell check.

A little effort goes a long way...trust me, your readers will notice and appreciate the effort even if you don't catch everything. First impression is everything; make it count.