25
Feb
Eliminate 21 Reputation-Crushing Writing Mistakes from Your Blog (via @ProBlogger)
Unfortunately for you and your readers, writing mistakes are like speed bumps on the blog post open highway. They slow down the reader and remove her from your world—the created reality that you share through your text.
Since you only have a few seconds to impress new readers, it’s critical to make all facets of your content flawless. If your writing confuses readers or hinders their experience because of a glaring error, you’ve failed.
Here are 21 common writing mistakes that turn off new readers. Eliminate them to demonstrate that you are an authority on your subject and get new subscribers.
1. You have no proverbial welcome mat
2. Your posts look like Wikipedia articles
3. You don’t answer “W? W? W? W? W? H?”
4. Your posts don’t include images
5. Your paragraphs break the four-line rule
6. Your headlines break the goldilocks rule
7. Each post does not have a byline
8. You use too many incomplete sentences
9. Your posts include obvious factual blunders
10. You make “actual word” typos
11. You use incorrect or excessive punctuation
12. Your blog has inconsistencies
13. You use vague words
14. You confuse plurals and possessives
15. You include too many links in posts
16. You misuse double and single quotation marks
17. You smother direct quotes
18. You make word choice errors
19. You use too many bold, italicized, and upper-case letters
20. Your blog’s font is too small, big, or fancy
Read more at www.problogger.net21. You publish first-draft copy