PARAGRAPHS
What is a paragraph and why should you use them?
A paragraph is simply a collection of sentences that all have some relation to each other. Typically, they contain no more than 3 or 4 sentences and in this day and age of tweets, your customers are going to have attention spans that measure roughly their age plus 100! (That used to be the old formula for blood pressure, but I think they've lowered that too, along with everyone's attention spans!).
Short paragraphs good, shorter paragraphs better
In addition, shorter paragraphs are going to give people an illusion of 'less to read'. Everyone is busy, everyone is frenetically looking for the next shiny object and if your customers think they are going to have to wade through a mountain of words to find what they are looking for, you will lose them - fast!
Use bold headings like these
Try breaking your writing into paragraphs, preferably with slightly larger, bold headings. This makes it easy for your readers to 'scan' the page to find out if it contains information they want. Make sure each paragraph contains only one main idea; don't start talking about the colour of your dog beds and in the same paragraph, mention that they are heavy duty. Write two short paragraphs - one about the colours, and one about the durability or quality of the construction.
That's it for now. It's rather a lot to digest, so give yourself a pat on the back!
When I started this tutorial, I thought I'd probably use a total of about 10 pages. But the more I wrote, the more I realised there was to cover. So rather than short-change my readers, I've decided to divide this into a couple of tutorials.
We've covered the basics of punctuation, but believe me, there's an awful lot more to it than just this short tutorial! The subtle nuances of correct English grammar are mind-boggling and I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert on the subject. But remember what I said on the second page..."You only have to know a little more than the other guy"?
I hope I've helped to pinpoint some of the more common mistakes and how to correct them. In the next Training Module, I will cover the remaining topics in "Me? Bother with correct English?" These include courtesy, competition and customers. I'm also considering a short (promise!) section on hyphens and ellipses...
Until next time and please feel free to send me your grammar and punctuation questions. If I don't know the answer, then we'll look it up and find out!
If you enjoyed this training and found it helpful, please 'like' it, comment and share.
Thank you
Ellie
P.S. There is a deliberate mistake on page 9. Find it and PM me - don't write it in the comments section. Any other errors - please let me know in the comments.
And then: "...are made of finest yak felt...", shouldn't that be: "...are made of THE finest yak felt..."? WIthout the capitalisation, of course?
At point 2, a space between 'to' and 'join' is missing.
I think I have my commas reasonably under control, even though I'm handicapped by my native language (Dutch) using a slightly different set of rules for their usage. But when the Oxford comma comes into play I get hopelessly lost. The colons and semicolons tend to drive me bonkers at times. If I can just remember what you wrote about them here, I might improve!
Reply
In the yak felt case, either would be correct. (One of the madnesses of English) I can say 'made of the finest yak felt' or 'made of finest yak felt'. The article is not compulsory here.
I'll check the spacing - it is so annoying when that happens!
You're great! I think I'll employ you as my personal editor!
Cheers
Ellie
But I thank you and will fix it pronto!
Yes - the hyphen between non and native is correct. I was going to add the correct use of hyphens but wondered if it was too long already. They are also a rather tricky subject and one that I see misused, unused and abused quite often.
You don't need to use 'alright' - it's just 'right' as in
Is that right? (or correct)
You've done amazingly well for a non-native speaker.
Thank you
Ellie
I've really enjoyed this - just shows how easy it is to let mistakes slip past - and I was trying really hard, too!
Thanks heaps
Ellie
(I cover the subject of slang and colloquial English in the next segment!)
I really like this training, because I need it.
Since my mother tongue is not the English language, it is hard to get some content well written.
Do you have maybe an idea how I can improve the quality of my content with a tool or something?
I use the free plug-in of Grammarly.com right now, but it's expensive to buy it.
Thanks,
Grtz,
Bert
I haven't used Grammarly myself, because being fairly proficient in English, I tend to trust my own judgement, or if I'm a bit puzzled, I simply type my specific problem into Google and check whatever website pops up. Some are better than others.
There are some 'spin-writing' tools available, but it is not recommended as google tends to pick up 'spun' content fairly quickly.
You can use Fivver and Elance to have your articles/content written, but what I found was that most of the people who offer to do writing are not native English speakers and the ones who are, charge a fair bit.
There are various translation tools available, but I am not altogether sure that they are very accurate. Some translations tend to come out pretty weird!
All I can really honestly recommend is that you get a good English writer to check your work for you. I have done so for a few people here, but it is time-consuming and I have to charge something or I would spend a lot of time and never get my own work done! You can send me a PM if you want to talk to me further about this option.
It's a good idea to ask for editing feedback here - specifically request that people check on your spelling, grammar etc.
I'd be glad to know if anyone knows of a good tool, but I really think it's just a case of learning, practising, checking, editing and asking for help to check your work.
I'm sorry not to be more helpful
Thank you for coming by. I appreciate it!
Cheers
Ellie
Cheers
Ellie
