Content has to be powerful

Newsletter is totally dependent on its content and its relevance. Know what you wish to say, followed by the art of saying it. Know what you wish to convey in a specific month of the year. Suppose you are a restaurant owner and you wish to promote your mocktails during summer, then convey the same in that month’s newsletter. Pick up a topic each month and relate it to your product or service.

Know your audience

Define you target audience before starting with your newsletter. Know demography, psychographic construct of you audience. Knowing more about them will help you to develop content of the newsletter while keeping tone, manner, and mood of the newsletter apt. Suppose you are selling an anti-ageing crème to the middle aged women, you should know how to approach them, what should be your style of communication and the like. You can’t afford to lose their interest because of inappropriate style.

Claims come with research

Don’t make big claims without supporting source of facts. Do ample research before making statements. This way you will not land up into problems too. Include facts, statistics, graphs, expert opinions, quotes supporting your research. Such data always build credibility. But don’t forget to mention the source.

Interesting heading

It’s good headlines which instantly draw attention towards the newsletter. Make sure the headline is extremely hard hitting and catchy, evoking curiosity. To make newsletter easy to read break the content into few paragraphs with sub headings.

Audience friendly lingo

Make sure your newsletter has audience friendly, easily comprehensive language, which people can relate to. Avoid technical jargons, too long sentences.

Proofread is important

A newsletter filled with grammatical errors, spelling mistakes is highly avoided. Apart from the writer, ask someone else to do the job. Mistakes show writer’s lack of concern, interest, and unprofessionalism. If a brand is laughed at, it is hardly taken seriously. So avoid this.

Now get started with it.

In 2011, SEO and writing is going to change big time as the rules of SEO game has changed and so has the readers’ mindset. People have stopped paying attention to copy that looks crappy, as lot of bad content has been littered on the Internet.

Not just the search engines, but users even are a lot more conscious of the value your content adds to his or her life, and after the introduction of snapshot feature in Google SERP, it has become more difficult for badly written content to make its way to the customers’ computer. Even when it gets a chance to get there, they are quickly thrown out.

So how to make a content interesting both for people and machine?

To make your content interesting for your readers you need to do the following:

• Use the language that your visitors converse in.
• Provide them the value they are looking for.
• Do not just write anything. Do a research before delving into the actual writing process.
• Read blog comments, forum posts, and watch YouTube videos to see what your customers are getting and what their requirements are.

Following the handful of tips given above will take your writing business to all new height, but how to make the same content accessible for machines (search engine bots).

If you are new to the field then the fact that you have to write content for machines as well may make you cringe, but this is what we all have been doing since always in the name of SEO content. We have been working to satisfy the needs of machine, so that it could display our websites when visitors come searching information on the topic we are writing.

To make your content standout with machines you need to do the following:

• Do not write for the machine. Even it does not want anything to be written exclusively for it.
• Place important keywords and other related terms at appropriate places.
• Do not go overboard with optimization.
• Write with audience in mind and SEO should be the secondary thought.

Content written for the two groups that we talked about above should not be mutually exclusive. You need to write content that meets the needs of both of them. This is not very difficult, all you need to do is practice.

Focus on specific words or sentences

One effective way of speedy reading is not reading the whole of a paragraph, but in bits in pieces. Pick up the important words, phrases and sentences. You can skip conjunctions and elaborations. They don’t carry much significance. Rest will automatically bring the essence.

Know your capability

Figure out your capability and grasping power of words, how fast can you read and understand in a minute. It will help you to know your average standard which you can improvise. Timing yourself will help you to improve every time and motivate you to beat the old score. Check how long it takes for you to finish one page of book. Jot down the speed in a paper. Don’t forget you shouldn’t read it blindly, you need to understand the meaning too.

Take speed reader tests

To gain mastery participate in computer based online or offline speed reader tests. Don’t lie to yourself about the output. Cheating won’t improve your performance. Also measure your comprehension level, to re-assure that you are not merely competing with fast reading but also comprehending the message and retaining the same. It will give you a realistic idea and steady improvement. You can search for such tests on search engines.

Let fingers guide you

Let your fingers scan the text, it will increase your reading speed.

Remove distraction

Make sure you remove distractions like television noise, music, pet’s disturbance, too much of talking and noise in your surroundings. Such distractions won’t give you the picture of your actual speed. Make sure you are at peace and not pre-occupied by tension and thoughts which can hinder your learning.

Speed reading learning is definitely not a child’s play. But consistent efforts do show results.

Your copy or content has to perform in this chaotic world. Wouldn’t it be too much to ask your content to do without providing it the weapon necessary to cut through the clutter? Those weapons are scannability, keywords, and short paragraphs. You need to keep following things in mind when writing for the web:

1. Keep the paragraph short. You are not creating a literary piece, so there is no need to make the paragraphs long. 3 to 4 sentences long paragraphs are enough.
2. Divide your articles using headings and subheadings.
3. Use important items as bullet points.
4. Use keywords in H1, H2, H3, and other heading tags.
5. Use primary keyword as early in the title as you can.
6. Use important keywords in the first 50 words, or at least in first 100 words.
7. Use headings and subheadings to communicate key ideas.
8. Use standard font in the blog or article you post on your website, so that most of the people can read the items.
9. You can also insert images and tables in an article or blog post to make the article scannable.
10. Keep the sentences shorter.
11. Do not confuse your readers by addressing too many issues in a small article. Keep it simple.

Your article or blog post should be constructed in such a way that your audience gets the central idea in the first 30 seconds. This is the amount of time one has for any online item. The visitors may stay longer if you succeed in retaining the audiences’ attention within this time limit.

1. First of all shed the fear of speaking English. Unless you can overcome the fear of speaking in public you won’t learn. Don’t get demoralized seeing others reaction towards your speaking. Don’t be afraid of committing of mistakes. Always remember, failures are the pillars of success. So go ahead, and speak. More you talk, more you improve. Read out loud. Hearing will reinforce your memory. Record your voice and play it later. Check how it sounds and where you went wrong.
2. Start with simple English. Use easy and concise vocabulary. Keep sentences short. While you speak maintain the clarity of voice.
3. Everyday read English at least for 30 minutes. Read newspaper, journal, novel, poem, short story, article whatever you like. Start with the easy ones and gradually progress towards difficulty.
4. Don’t get tempted to use idioms and proverbs you hardly know. You may convey completely wrong meaning to the audience. Moreover many non-English people may not be able to interpret it.
5. Don’t swallow the dictionary. It looks quite silly when people are tempted to use big mouthful difficult words where a simple word could easily fit in.
6. Interact with English speaking friends and colleagues more often. Friends who have enrolled in English speaking courses are a good source of learning. Talk to them more often; carefully watch while they speak. Even if you fall short of words continue talking. They will be more likely to help you.
7. Develop your written skill too. Unless you have a decent command on the vocabulary you won’t be able to communicate.
8. Watch English movies, television serials, news. Carefully follow the accent. Following fluent good English will unknowingly influence yours. Try singing English songs.
9. Brush up English grammar. It will strengthen your speaking. Revise tense, parts of speech, articles, form of verb.
10. Always carry a pocket dictionary. Whenever new word strikes you, make yourself familiar with it.
11. Learn a new word every day. Learn its meaning, pronunciation. Make it a daily practice and soon your vocabulary will be rich.
12. Go more often to English clubs, pubs, shops, cafes where people converse in English only. Mixing up with English people will definitely help your verbal skill.

Will you still think learning spoken English is a big job? It’s as easy as any other language. All you have to do is hold your patience and follow the tips; as nothing will happen overnight. Stay focused and dedicated. Soon you will be master of it.

Writing a press release is a bit tricky – and I am not talking about technical stuffs when I wrote that – but it will not remain so, should you read this article through the end.

4 Press release tip

Use Newsworthy angle

Not every write-up can pass for a press release, and your advertising, promotional, and self-glorifying materials will also not pass for a press release.

The content of your press release should be newsworthy for it getting accepted by the online newswire (press release distribution services). If you do not have a newsworthy announcement to make then you can talk of any product offer that you are giving, or any services that you are offering. Write any non-promotional material you want, but write it from the news angle. Just provide who, what, when, where and how of the story. Do not go overboard with self promotion.

A good start is important

The very first sentence of your press release should be powerful. Use targeted headline for the press release, and succinctly provide all the required information in the first paragraph of the press release. You need to give all the details of the news (provide who, what, when, where and how) in the first paragraph only.

Keep it short

The length of your press release should not be around 500 words. Do not make it longer. No one likes to read 3-page long release. Use short sentences, and active voice. Write only those things that adds value to the reader. As said, 500-word is the number you should try to be around.

Write for the media

Many press releases fail to attract attention from media people, newswire, and journalists, etc., because the press release is not written with them in mind. It is written with readers in mind. Writing a press release for end users is a mistake, as they are not the immediate target audience of a press release. Write it for media.

You should also include your contact information at the end, to assist those who want more information about the release.

Proofreading is a 3-step process that begins with skimming through the article followed by hounding the article for mistakes, and finishes again by scanning through the article.

Step 1: Skim through

This is the very first step. In this step the goal is to search for the obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes. You should also fix the grammatical errors that are obvious. Do not spend too much time here. This step is done merely to remove the obvious mistakes. In many cases, this is all you will need to do.

Step 2: Hound for the error

The next step is to read every bit word, every sentence, and every paragraph. Search for mistakes that you missed in the first step. You may have to fix some sentences as well, or have to rearrange some. Find the errors and fix them. Make a note of the errors, if you are fixing other’s work. The writer may want to get his original ones back.

Step 3: Skim again

This is the third step in the process of proofreading. In this step, your goal is to check the cohesiveness of the article, which might have changed because of the editing you have done to the article. Also search for the errors that you might have missed in the step one and two.

Once you are through with these steps, you will get an article that will be cohesive and free of errors. You can also consider reading your article backward — from finish to beginning. It will expose those errors that you overlook, as a habit — particularly in your articles.

Better Website Copy Writing Tips

• Your copy should not be visually heavy. Make the copy easy to scan. You can do that by dividing copy using sub-headings, and bullet points.
• Keep one eye on the target audience and another on the matter you want to convey. It is necessary to strike a balance between the two.
• Always remember, in writing style is so important that at times style, in itself, becomes substance.
• Add relevant “call to action” at important junctures in your web pages. This will help you increase conversion.
• Do not talk about attributes, talk about benefits.
• Build the story until it reaches to climax in the last line where you should add the ultimate call to action.
• Do not make pages multi-focused.
• Define model target audience of the website before writing copy for them.
• Use short sentences and short and simple paragraphs.
• Keep the content jargon free.
• List the benefit.
• Make the benefit as clear as possible.

Copy is what determines the future of the website. The more time you will invest in creating the copy, better will be the future of your website.

Metaphor as described by Merriam Webster dictionary is:

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.

Read the following two sentences and tell me which one sounds more compelling to you:

“He was silent, very silent, and completely motionless.”

“He was as silent and stationary as the dead.”

Of course, the latter one. The former sentence didn’t have the punch required to make us realize how much the person was silent and how much immobile he was, but once we supply the metaphor of dead, everything becomes clear, as we know how silent and motionless a dead person can be.

Metaphor helps us inject emotion in the written words. It helps us make the passage of texts relatable for the reader. The metaphor makes the read feel what has been written. A proper use of metaphor transforms the text making it meaningful for the readers.

Caution

Metaphor is a cultural thing. A wrongly used metaphor will push the audience far, far away. Hence, you should be careful in using it in your writing, and understand the cultural background of the users before infusing a metaphor in your writing.

A metaphor that works well in India may or may not produce the same result in Brazil. Culture plays an important role in it. If you are in doubt, use neutral metaphor. Like the one I have used in above example. No matter where you go, what cultural background you have the dead will be silent and stationary. Similarly, sky in the moonless night will be dark, stuff out of refrigerator will be cold, mid summer’s afternoon will be unbearably hot, etc.

Do not walk the cultural line while using metaphor if you are not sure.

Stages of writing

The process of writing can be divided into three stages. These are:

• Pre-writing
• Writing
• Editing and Proofreading

Let’s discuss each one of them in brief.

Pre-writing

Pre-writing is the phase in which we ideate about what we have to write. We prepare a structured layout of the piece we have to write. In this stage, we accomplish the following things:

• We find the topic to write on.
• We research the topic.
• Read some articles on the topic.
• We brainstorm and jot down in bullet points the things that should go in writing..
• Prepare a layout of which point will go where. It is in the pre-writing stage that most of the writing happens.

Writing

This is the phase in which you give shape to the ideas generated in the pre-writing phase. In this phase, concentrate on the writing only, do not go for editing or anything like that. Write through the end without worrying about the errors in this phase.

Editing and proofreading

This is the phase in which we give final touch to our written piece. We make the changes if required, proofread it for grammatical, structure and punctuation errors. You can also shift sentences or paragraphs up and down to make the article more cohesive.

Any writing, no matter what you are writing, follows these steps. Some writer follow these steps intuitively, i.e., in their minds, while other have to use paper and pen to go through these.

Use emphatic headlines

The goal of a headline is not to sell the product, but to push the audience to read further by generating interest in them. When writing a marketing copy or copy for print ads then write headline in such a way that audience get curious after reading this and decide to read further.

Use descriptive sub-heading

The purpose of the subheading is to explain the promise made by the headline and push the reader to read the body copy.

Write focused body copy

This is where you need to sell your stuff. Your body copy should fulfill the promises made by the headline and the sub-heading. Use a conversational tone, do not preach your target audience. They hate it like anything. Each word of the body copy should lead you to the next word, and the next word to the next word, and so on. You can achieve this only by using measured words.

Tips for writing body copy

• Use short sentences.
• Write the body copy using active voice.
• Keep the writing jargon-free. No one likes to read technical details.
• Express the benefits not the features.
• One size doesn’t fit all, therefore, right body copy with the target audience in mind. The copy you will write for a doctor who is 26 years of age and an artist of the same age will be different. Keep this subtle difference in mind.
• Talk, do not preach.
• Tell the reader, how you can help him solve his problem.
• Use direct sentences.

Add Call to action

The marketing copy will fetch no result, if there is no call to action included at critical juncture in the marketing copy. A call to action tells the user what is expected of him. What action you want from him. This is very, very important.

Conclusion

Marketing copy writing is as much a science as it is an art. You cannot achieve anything meaningful by just making the writing flowery. Always remember, you are not writing a birthday card, its marketing stuff that you are writing.

Take risks

Do not always play a safe game; rather, never play a safe game. Take risks and explore the terrain. You will not learn new things about life, about new ways to construct sentences, and will never get new ideas to write about until you venture out and take risk. Try different construction; try different storyline; so what if you fail!

Revisit your write-ups

Reading and analyzing what you have written in the past is another way to ensure quality of your future writing. You should have a sense of history. You should know from where you started and how far have you come, and then only you can realistically decide where you can go from here.

Rope in your friend

This advice is the toughest to follow because no matter how good your friendship is, he or she will not like to do proofreading for you, at least not readily. My friends have never done that for me, and neither have I put myself through the grueling session of proofreading for my friends. You got the clue, but still you need to talk your friend into proofreading your stuff. If they don’t agree then you have not tried hard enough.

Take a break

Writing is not like producing soap in the factory. You cannot just keep on pouring oil and chemicals for hours, even when you are tired and exhausted, to get the final product. To write well, you need to take breaks between your writing. Play games, watch TV, listen to music, or do whatever you like, but take breaks.

Take a break then return to proofread

Do not proofread your document right after finishing it. You will miss out many errors because your mind was primed by the article. Take a break 10-20 minutes and then come back to do the proofreading. Please do not think about what you wrote during the break.

Find an audience and kill them

Well, this is known to all the fiction writers, especially poets. Nobody likes to read or listen to anyone else’s piece, until and unless he is Dan Brown or Paulo Coelho. It will take some persuading before you can read your work to anyone, even to your cat, but you must do it, in order to figure out the issues with your writing. For now, you just need listeners, not their feedbacks.

Discount 10 percent words

This is something worth doing. I know you will feel the pang as everyone of us does, but always remember your goal is not to create a piece full of sentences, but to create a beautiful work of art with only required number of sentences. Do not fall in love with sentences; fall in love with your overall piece, and attempt to make the whole piece look good.

Hear what they say

A good writer takes cues from the real life, and listening to others will give you many. Overhear others, if you need to, because you can get the best insight only by becoming invisible observer.

Observe how they talk

Not only the contents of their talks are important, but the style used to convey the message is equally important. This will tell you how to say it.

Read, read and study

To make your writing shine like the writing of masters, you will need to study the works of great writers. Do not limit yourself to reading great writers, read bad ones as well. To be able to differentiate chaff from wheat, you need to know what is what.

A word a day

Words and sentences are the pillars on which the structures of even gigantic epics are erected. From poems to stories, from drama to prose, from essays to articles, from fictions to non-fictions; everything is constructed from words. I hope I do not need to write more about the importance of words. The more you will learn the better will be your expression. Which word have you learned today?

Practice, practice, and practice

I know it sounds like some NBA or baseball coach shouting at you, but believe me nothing required more practice than writing. Leave writing for a month or two and you will see the significant drop in not only the quality of your work, but also in the way you use words and form sentences. Therefore, it is required of you to practice this craft daily, and keep your pen running and fingers moving on the keyboard.

Brush your Grammar

You must be wondering, why I am donning so many roles today; first I shouted like a sports coach, now I am advising you to read grammar with a stern face known to a school teacher. Let me put it other way. We need to practice grammar to keep ourselves aware of the rules, and grammar rules are nothing just a condensation of best writing practices that has been made standard. A common grammar rule book helps all of us remain on the same plane.

Remove distractions

Writing is not a social activity. It is a lonely journey through the highs of mountains and lows of valleys. This is the journey you have to take alone, and as soon as you get a company your journey is terminated then and there. Remove everything from the place that you are going to use to write. Remove all distractions.

Try different forms of writing

If you write just blog post then try writing press releases or sales letter and vice versa. If you are a fiction writer then write nonfiction. If you write poems, write stories. Change your genre and try your limit.

Know that writing an article will give you an opportunity to showcase your expertise in your chosen industry.  This will allow you to gain recognition from sources that you otherwise may have been unavailable to, and it’s a fantastic way to get your name out there.  But make sure you know your stuff, because writing an article will also expose any lacking knowledge that you just don’t have.  Nothing looks worse than when you’re supposed to be writing an informative article when you’re not an expert in the points you’re trying to get across.

So first choose a concept that you want to focus on for an article.  Just one, so that you’ll find it easy to stay on topic and not get away from the point of the piece.  Then focus on writing an informative article, in your unique voice, displaying your unique expertise.  Remember that you have something worthwhile to say, that’s why you’re writing in the first place.  Carry through that confidence into your words and formulate something you would want to read.

From there, just use the typical writing guidelines to improve your article.  In editing ensure that all of your sentences are concise and make a good point.  Make sure you stay on topic, and make sure your article isn’t too long.  You want people to be able to take something from what you’ve written.  The only way to do that is to edit your piece successfully so that the end product is a concise informative article.

Below, I am giving a handful of writing tips that will help people like me read more on the Internet, by the way, most of the people on the Internet are like me only.

1. Use Headlines, headings and subheading that make sense. Keep clever lines safe for print.
2. Use simple words. No one like using a dictionary when scanning through the Internet.
3. Use short sentences to convey the idea.
4. Use short paragraphs. Paragraphs that run into 10s of sentences are strict no-no for the web.
5. Write a proper paragraph; one idea per paragraph.
6. Break the articles into small chunks by using headings and subheads.
7. Make your text more scannable by making important keywords bold, italic or by underlining it.
8. Use lists like this one, wherever it is possible. It is easy to go through a list than a 10-sentence paragraph.
9. Use objective language. Do not make your article sound like a promotion material.
10. Link old articles or blog-posts on your domain to retain visitors for long.

Good writing should be as concise and always to the point as possible.  When you write too much fluff your readers tend to shut off their brains, or worse, get bored and stop reading altogether.  You first edit should focus on how you can take what you’ve written, and formulate it into a shorter piece of work that tells the same story.  Nobody wants to read over inflated paragraphs or multiple sentences that make the same point.

After that, learn your strengths and weaknesses.  If you’re not very descriptive, make sure you spend extra editing time ensuring that your moments of description are fleshed out well enough.  You can’t be too vague, but you also don’t want to over describe to make up for your weakness.  Also learning the areas that you tend to need work on will allow you to target where you should go first when editing a piece.

Get as much feedback from third party sources as possible.  Get a friend to read what you’ve written, or a coworker, or even a family member.  Someone that will provide you with good honest criticism.  We all need honest criticism so that we can grow as people, and writing is no different.  In fact writing ability hinges on your ability to get effective criticism, and incorporate it into your style to become a better writer on the whole.

Finally, always give your piece a read through backwards.  This is especially helpful for noticing little grammatical errors, or punctuation mistakes.  By reading backwards your brain doesn’t concentrate on what the writing means, but just on the words and characters themselves.  This affords you the opportunity to avoid being engaged in what your writing says, instead focusing on how you’ve written each individual portion.

1. Know your audience
2. Avoid common grammatical errors
3. Focus on your readers
4. Chop off useless sentences
5. Don’t preach

Know your intended audience, as you will be writing for them.  So if you’re writing a piece of information about cycling for example, you would want to include some insider knowledge involving the latest bicycle tech or other equipment.  Showing that you are in the know regarding your topics validates your opinions to your readers, and keeps them coming back for more info.

Avoid commonly made grammatical mistakes.  Nothing frustrates a reader like their inability to quickly skim through your writing because of grammatical errors that should have been caught before the final draft.

Put your focus to your audience.  If you are trying to demonstrate a point, or act as a guide for any topic stay away from using the word “I” in favor of “you”.  For example, you wouldn’t want to write “I do this, so you should too.”.  You want to gravitate towards more of a “you should do this, and here’s why” to create a dialogue with the reader, and show them why what you’re writing is important to them.

Never rephrase the same sentence a few times in one of your works just to act as filler.  That’s repetitive and will put your reader to sleep.  You want a short concise, well edited, grammatically correct piece of work.  Get to the point, but make sure the road to that point is engaging.

Never preach that your method is the best because it’s your method.  That will turn off a reader faster than you would think.  Nobody wants to read a self inflating brag fest that does little more than bloat your own ego.  People want to read how what you have to say applies to them, not that they should follow your example because you’re so awesome.

Sometimes, instinct gives a good indication about what topic will get warm welcome from the readers, and what will be ignored as if it never existed, but instinct cannot be a reliable guide, if you have to write daily or regularly for any magazine, newspaper, online magazine or blog. You need a more reliable system then the instinct has to offer.

Before working on developing any idea into an article or a blog post, you should check how it does on the following parameter:

Do you have something new to offer?

The chances are quite high that the topic you are going to write about has already been covered by the magazine or blog you are writing for. Even if they have not covered it, their competitors must have done that. Do you have anything new to say about the weight-loss program you are going to write about? Any new development or a new angle? Even a fresh point of view can offer the required newness.

Does your writing flow?

If you want people to read what you write, your articles and blog posts need to flow. No one likes bumpy rides. Your words and sentences should help them glide through the paragraph after paragraphs. Do not use jargons, and keep the structure as simple as the writing idea permits. Always remember, your readers have limited time, and in this time, he can either read your article or do other things like, watching television, listening music, or write on Facebook walls.

How will it connect with the reader?

This is the most crucial point. You have a groundbreaking idea, and your writing style makes you hell of a charmer, but still your visitors are not falling over each other to read your piece, why? May be because you have targeted a wrong market, and the readers here are too smart or too stupid for your kind of articles. People will read only if you step up or step down (depending upon where you are) to their level. Can the reader connect with your article?

What’s the use?

Imagine this: you have come home after a long tiring day at office, and you turned on your laptop to read something, or picked a magazine to browse through. Your eyes happen to find an article that has a nice juicy headline, interesting sub-headlines, and even the first few lines are written wonderfully. You couldn’t resist but read it till the end, but here comes the bomb. The article has nothing to offer but a nice flowing style of writing. It doesn’t add even a single word, sentence or idea to your repertoire of the existing knowledge. You feel wastes. Your reader will feel the same, so make sure you are writing because you have something valuable to offer.

Will it entertain?

The entertainment value of any article should not be underrated. People do not read your article just because they feel you are going to redeem them. They do not think that way, nor are they here to get enlightened, though they will not mind it, if the redemption and enlightenment is offered sugar-coated in entertainment. You do not need to preach to send the serious message across. Do not think readers are so blunt.

Well, always reread anything you’ve written a few times, to ensure that your sentences flow naturally, and to clear up any grammatical mistakes you may have made.  Good policy also suggests reading your pieces aloud, as it’s a fantastic method to double check how your writing sounds on the whole.  Reading aloud will give you the opportunity to make sure that everything flows properly, and that all sentences sound complete.

Another widely used, and remarkably effective tactic, is to read in reverse.  This is helpful for weeding out those cursed grammatical errors that you may still miss despite completing two or three rereads.  When you read your piece in reverse it eliminates the brain’s tendency to remember what you’ve written, which can cause you to skip over mistakes without even knowing that you have.

When restructuring a sentence never add more words to the sentence than were originally there, always cut the excess.  The problem with most first drafts of any piece of writing, is that they are much longer than necessarily needed.  Focus on condensing your concepts into as few sentences and paragraphs as possible, that way you can form a short concise work that will appeal to a broader audience.

These are just a few quick editing tips, there are many, many more concepts when you really get more in depth into what the editing process can do for a piece of writing.  But follow those guidelines and you’ll find yourself well on your way to becoming a better, and more complete writer.