What Makes a Good Article?

As a writer, it can sometimes be difficult to look at the articles you write in an objective way. When you put your heart and soul into a piece of writing, you want to believe that what you have created is a work of brilliance! This is hardly ever the case, though, because there are always things you can do to improve your writing, although you don't always know what exactly you could have done differently. Sometimes, it boils down to the fact that practise makes perfect and so you just have to get writing more to improve your writing skills.

There are a few basic things to consider when writing to ensure that you create interesting articles that other people enjoy reading. First of all, you are not writing a novel and so you need to be alert to the fact that you only have so many words to play around with. When you have decided upon the title you intend to write to, you have to ensure the points you raise relate to the article topic. Otherwise, you could find yourself waffling on about issues which aren't directly related to the title. Indeed, if you are writing about a complex topic, you may even be able to get a number of different articles out of it.

Thus, as an article writer, you have to learn to be selective with your material, as if an article is too long someone who has clicked on it might not bother to read the whole thing. At the same time, you don't want to make your article too short, because you will end up with a lot of frustrated readers. If you are trying to create lots of articles quickly, you may be inclined to cut corners and produce as few words as possible, but how can you possibly explore an issue in any depth in fewer than 300 or 400 words? A good article is one where there are enough words to provide analysis or an explanation of a topic, but doesn't go overboard.

If you want to produce a good article, it is also worth dividing your article up into paragraphs. You need to create an introduction that introduces the reader to what the article is about, then write a few paragraphs which explore your chosen topic, before writing a conclusion that rounds up what has just been said. This linear structure ensures that the reader can see where you're going with the article. It is better to be clear about what the article is about and to make relevant points, rather than including random ideas which don't seem to connect with anything else you've written.

Another simple thing to bear in mind is that an article littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is unlikely to be considered a good article. Even if your ideas are original and what you have to say is interesting, a reader is not going to be able to see past the mistake-strewn article, especially if it doesn't appear to make any sense, and so may give up on it before reaching the end. If you don't take the time to proofread your work, why would anyone else bother to read what you have to say? You therefore need to pay attention to the small details to ensure you produce high-quality work.

Of course, everyone has 'off' days when they're not at their best and end up producing substandard work. The chances are not every article you create is going to be what other people consider to be good. However, there are plenty of opportunities to write articles and the more you practise, the better you become, so that the incidence of poor-quality articles will be less frequent. The main thing is that you keep on writing, reading what you write and learning where you went wrong and consider ways to improve, so that you will be able to implement new ways of doing things which could benefit the quality of your writing.