You are Writer

18 Mar 2019 14:14
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Just Getting Started

First of all it is important to have the basic rudiments of good grammar skills down before you can begin to turn out acceptable written articles. It is maybe as how to write a movie review or other hard content. And when you do turn in a finished article for a client, even if it is a first draft, it is very important to have any grammatical errors corrected before the first submission. How do you think it will look to an employer who hands you an assignment and you turn it in with words misspelled or sentences that are fragmented or run on—not very good. The employer will return the work and ask you to correct the errors and will more than likely make a mental note not to use you again, ever.

Writers trying to make it in this highly competitive field are only as good as their work implies, so make a good impression the first time. Read over your work before a first submission. Read it over five times if need be and make sure that there are no errors, and then submit. If the employer then wants to change something, it will have more to do with content or paragraph placement, not simple grammatical errors that should never have been an issue in the first place.

Utilize All Available Sources

The Internet is full of helpful sites for the grammarian. Learn all there is to know about subject verb agreement, as that is one of the easiest and most common errors that new writers fail to accomplish. But it does not need to be. With some brushing up on rules, it will become second nature for you to pick out the subject and correspond the verb accordingly. Simply put if the subject is singular so must the verb, but if the subject is plural then so must the verb. The subject and the verb have to agree in number.

That is only the tip of the iceberg of common errors made by the writer just starting out. Active and passive voice is another common mistake. If a sentence begins in the active voice then it should end in the active voice. Do not mix tenses and it is probably a good idea to remain in the active voice, if possible; sometimes it is not always possible to remain in the active voice and you have to construct a sentence in the past tense, which is all right depending on the subject matter and the time frame of events. If you are writing on a subject matter that happened in the past, you will more than likely construct a lot of sentences that are in the past tense, but be consistent.

As a writer, you will be writing for someone who will have their specifications expected to be adhered to. If an employer wants you to write on a subject that may not interest you or something that you may not be well versed, you will have to adjust your way of thinking and writing to the client’s expectations. After all he or she is the one paying you, so do everything that the employer asks and chances are, especially if your first submission is free of grammatical errors, you will be hired again.

Never Forget the Importance of Deadlines

Deadlines are another important aspect of creative writing. When a client knows that he or she can go to you because you have consistently met deadlines by turning in quality work on time and error free, your employability will rapidly increase.

And then there is writing for the Internet, which is fast becoming the platform for new writers to begin their careers and education. Writing for clients who own a web site and are trying to promote a product. The owner of the website wants to be sure that if someone is looking around for the product that he or she is selling, a link will be among at least the first ten, a search produces. You therefore as the writer and promoter of the product have to be sure to use words throughout the article that a search engine will find and this can only be done by writing an article or a product promotion piece that has the content a prospective customer is searching.

Then there are meta tags, which are simply key words, the most important words, that a prospective consumer or web browser may use in a search to find a product or article on something that he or she is interested. Take for example the words “mortgage finance,” that would be a key meta tag word(s) that you will use to describe what the article is about.

If the article is long, choose meta tag words accordingly to the content of your article and only those most important words that best describe the written content. This is a time to be empathetic. Put yourself in the place of the web surfer who might be searching for exactly what it is you are promoting and write keeping in mind that people will be looking for the information you are presenting and then choose your meta tags accordingly, geared toward your content and the article’s overall message.

In this highly competitive field of writing, research writers have to be a cut above the rest. Sometimes this takes time, even years, but eventually your work will be good enough that employers will recognize you and more importantly the quality of your work as someone for whom he or she can depend on to meet a deadline by producing a piece free of errors and geared toward their target audience.

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