Archives for November 2008

The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of Great Article Writing

I know I covered the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How the last time. But, haven’t you got it yet? There is always more involved than what I let on in my first post on any topic. In fact, entire books have been written about article writing. Entire college courses teach it. So, one simple post isn’t going to cover everything.

Articles that get in depth are what people want to read. Don’t simply answer the questions and move on to other questions. Get in depth information that goes deeper than anyone else writing on that topic. Otherwise, you are simply telling people what they already know.

Example:

Frederick Dominguez and his kids were lost for three days in the mountains of Northern California because they ventured out there to cut down a Christmas tree. They were found on Wednesday by a California Highway Patrol helicopter crew.

If you visit any news site or look in any newspaper where this story is told, you will find this information. Does it answer the six critical questions? Yes.

Who – Frederick Dominguez and his kids.

What – were lost and have been found.

When – Wednesday.

Where – mountains of Northern California.

Why – looking for a Christmas tree.

How – California Highway Patrol helicopter crew.

But if you can find this story anywhere, why would anyone read yours? It makes all the difference in the world that the mother of the children had no idea they were missing until she realized her youngest child didn’t go to school on Monday. It makes all the difference in the world that a new snow storm was about to come and the search was about to be aborted. It makes all the difference in the world that people like Cory Stahl who owns a pest control business shut his business down so that all the employees could help with the search.

There are plenty of answers to those six basic questions. Keep digging. Dig deeper. Make sure you have as much information as you can and discount nothing. Any bit of information can make your article more interesting than the others. That’s the essence of great article writing.

What are style guides?

Michael has covered the APA and MLA writing styles in an earlier post that you can find here. There are numerous writing styles and you should always check to ensure which style you will be using for a particular piece of work. Simply putting “Style guide” into Google or other search engine will throw up a whole list of these guides.

Every publication will have it’s own writing style guide which you will be expected to follow for your own work if you expect to see it published. Fortunately, getting hold of a style guide is free if the publication has it stored online and is available for th elikes of you and me to download gratis. You can find the Guardian’s here and for the academics, the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) has their’s here.

What are you going to uncover in these Style Guides?
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The Dynamics of Writing an Article: And How it Applies to Today

The art of writing articles has changed a bit due to the internet explosion. Yes, it still works the same way in many of the traditional venues. But, articles have changed mainly because of article submission sites and blogs.

Many people in the internet world consider blogs to be articles and in some ways they are. Blogs started as bits of information a writer intended to get across in an informal setting. Now, they are actually relied upon by many readers. If you Google a topic, you will find a hundred blogs compared to one authoritative site. And blogs have become very authoritative of themselves.

But, article submission sites such as EzineArticles and AssociatedContent have made it easy for anyone to write an article and get it published. I honestly love the internet and many of its venues for giving everyone the same leverage. There are things that need to be said and it’s critical that they get said at the right time. The internet offers everyone an instant voice for anyone who is willing to listen and I love that.

But, some art gets lost in the process. The years of college a journalist goes through and all the discipline that a writer suffers is thrown out of the window when just anyone can step up to the plate. People forget or were never taught the basics of article writing. [Read more…] about The Dynamics of Writing an Article: And How it Applies to Today

Passive-v-Active Voice

I have the habit of writing in the passive voice, a hangover from my school days when the difference between the two was never mentioned. I must consciously think of writing in the active voice all of the time and it is not easy. Indeed many writers, new and experienced find writing in the active voice tiring, not least as it requires mental effort from most to keep writing with it.

So what is the difference between an Active Voice and the Passive Voice?

A grammatical definition will go something like this:

“The active voice uses the subject of a sentence to act upon something, whereas the passive voice has the subject itself acted upon.”

In plain English, the subject of a sentence is doing something to something else so;

“ERH wrote this using his computer.”

The subject is ERH and he is writing, in other words ERH is doing something and this makes it the active voice.

Compare this sentence with;

“This was written on a computer by ERH.”

This is written in the passive voice where ERH is still the subject but instead of ERH “doing something” he has “something done” by him – the verb “written” is acting upon the subject “ERH”.

When to Use Who and Whom

I thought it time to nobble this particular English language conundrum – when to use Who and when to use Whom.

Supaproofread has a section that goes into far more detail than I will here on this post and you can find it in the writing tips section here.

Who is a subjective pronoun that describes what or which person.

Whom is a pronoun that acts as an object for a verb or preceding preposition.

Phew!

In plain English please!!

A subjective pronoun is a word that is used when the person is a subject of the sentence. So, “I like fast cars but he doesn’t” – “I” and “he” are subjective pronouns. We would ask “Who likes fast cars?” but not “Whom likes fast cars?”

A verb object is the person or thing the verb is acting on. So, “ERH flew the plane” has ERH as the subject, the verb is flying and the object is the plane. Except we would never refer to a plane as “whom” so how about “ERH flew her to Paris.” In the latter case, “her” would be the object and so we would ask “With whom did ERH fly to Paris?”

Got that?

Here’s a cheat tip then.

If you have a sentence using he/she then use “Who” and if it is him/her use “Whom”.

Defeating Prevarication and Stating a Position Improves Your Credibility

You are a writer.

In my opinion, as you use the written word, then perhaps you should be considered eligible for the title “writer”.

Which statement makes you feel like you really are a writer? Me, telling you that you are a writer or me, waffling about an opinion I have, that maybe, possibly you can be called a writer?

It’s not a hard decision to make. Stating a position clearly and straight to the point without any caveat or ambiguous language makes my position clear to a reader, waffling does not. Adding language such as “perhaps”, “maybe” and Heaven forbid, “in my opinion” makes you appear to readers as if you are not sure of yourself or the position you are taking.

As a writer, you are taking a leadership role in the community of the written word. Many people may read your work, some may comment upon it, some may use it themselves but you as the creator of that piece of work have taken a lead at that point in order to deliver it to the written community. You are the leader so act like one. After all, if you do not truly believe in what you are creating, how can you expect anyone else to buy into your work?
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