It’s always shocking when you write a blog entry, publish it, and then come back hours later to re-read it and find it is littered with misspellings and grammatical errors. Even more so when you know it has already been read by multiple blog visitors. So what’s the Vincent top 10 formula for ensuring sure you don’t make yourself look like a 7 year-old non-genius?
- Don’t read, just glance.
When you write and read repeatedly your mind becomes numb to the actual words and although casting your eye over the words as you read, your brain is really just reciting what it remembers and you will easily miss typos. Trick #1 therefore is to look for the RED underscores in your text editor. This at least catches the most obvious howlers. - Check for conformity.
Read through the titles etc and make sure they are all styled the same. Are they all initial caps? Do they all end with a full-stop? Make the styling for our various markers along the way consistent. If nothing else it makes the overall blog posting look a whole lot better. - Wait …
They say patience is a virtue right? True enough, but when you have just polished off a 1500-word posting, and you want to get it published ASAP, waiting is the last thing you want to do. Even if you hold of 5-10 minutes before doing a final read through, those 10 minutes would be well served in the grand scheme of things. - Keep re-reading.
Even after you have published the post, keep reading it over and over, in your head and out loud to catch anything. The more times you read the post the greater the chance of catching things. People won’t necessarily tell you later when things are wrong, and going through older posts proofing them is a real pain. - Preview it in situ.
Use the lowly ‘Preview’ button and review the text & graphics you have just added for your post in the overall design of your blog. This fresh setting might just allow you to catch things that you wouldn’t quite have noticed before. The difference in the two stylings between the edited and live/preview versions on-site can make all the difference. - Enlist help.
Get some friends or colleagues to proof for you, WordPress even has ‘Editor’ roles and ‘Pending Review’ status. Everyone loves to have a sneak peak and to provide opinion, so why not harness that power in the form of ‘free’ proofers. Who knows they might even tell you where to cut back on your verbose descriptions!
So there you have it, 6 golden rules for making sure your blog posts sparkle and you don’t ever look like an illiterate junkie again!
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I am, for want of a better word, a web developer. Practising since '96 and
focused on front and back-end work with a slant for optimisation.
I love music, art, and helping people, traits which I hope are borne out here.
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Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Dec 10, 2009 | Sazbean Dec 10, 2009
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