Top 10 Tips to Writing Excellent Articles (Technical Blogging)

Writing is an inborn art.
Writers are special people who know to juggle with words.
Novelists/Writers have great vocabulary.

All the Above are MYTHS. Writing is sure an art, but need not be inborn. For a good article you do not need good vocabulary, or great hold of the language.

“There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” ~Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

The quote above says it all – writing is all about what you feel or what you want to say.
As far as it goes, its just a starting trouble. Once you get started, you are open with your thoughts. You then exactly know what you want to pen down.

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ~ Jack London

So here it goes, my few points on writing excellent technical articles. All based on my experience on this blog.

1. Attitude towards Writing

   “What a writer brings to any story is an attitude…” John Gregory Dunne

   If you know, many of the classic writers, or musicians (classic era) were actually the employees of knights and other high class people, who ordered them towards creating.

   Have you figured out your own attitude when you had to do something for someone on their Orders? Yes… we think ourselves as very unfortunate to having doing this. We become very pessimistic, and a kinda rebellious attitude towards the work.

   Those Classic writers did not have this problem, for them writing was for the readers, they did not have the defeated attitude. And that’s why they succeeded.

   After all we need to see that our readers do not get bored of us

2. Adopting Generative Habits

   An excellent article does not come by itself, it needs all our attention on it. This requires making some research, choose the words and shape sentences. In short, you need to use the time.

   To succeed in this, it is vital to the professional writer (a good blogger) productive to adopt good habits.

   Have you thought about how you use your time devoted to writing your articles?

   To write well is necessary to think well, and for that we go back to the time factor. Find your best time to write either daily or weekly if you prefer, but then become your special time. Over time it will become a habit, a routine.

   The Pomodoro Technique is what we can encapsulate this into. Alternatively called Time Management.

3. Valuable Information

   Write on or about articles which would last over time. Or write articles which are valuable to the readers.

   I was searching on some help tutorials couple of years back, and returned with none on the topic. I then got to do that myself later overcoming lots of issues. That’s when I thought of penning down it step by step for our friends. Now the article alone fetches around 3000 page views a month.

   You can enter the commercial thinking, writing content just to attract the attention of search engines, and make occasional visits. Or you can write thinking about the quality, the durability of the content, knowing that the visits will increase gradually but steadily. It’s always one or the other, you can not mix the two

4. The First Impression

   “Write your first draft with your heart.  Re-write with your head”. ~From the movie Finding Forrester

   The first paragraph of the article should contain a brief of what the whole stuff is about.

   You need to make sure that you pin point the key point of the article, and a brief of the solution. You can use Quotes, shocking facts, or images to convey the point and thereby engaging the reader.

   The First paragraph has to be very different from other similar articles of the genre. It should be unique in its own way, else the reader would skip it considering it to be same as others.

   The First paragraph also helps search engines to figure out your content, as those might be the words which come up during a search.

5. Utilize Facts & Figures

   Using simple facts and figures can makes your article more authoritative. Do not use aimless facts, or make up your own figures. Also do not make it look too formal, it should be light, easily understood. It should sound like a teacher imparting facts to the students.

   Keep your paragraphs short and to the point. Do not wander around too much unless you are writing a novel.

6. Use Short Paragraphs

   “I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.” ~Harold Ross

   Very much any email that you might have got in the past few months having huge text blocks might have been skipped by you either thinking of reading it in the free time or simply Deleting it off. The same happens with all articles. Any article giving a feeling of having too much to read will be skipped by any reader.

   Keep your paragraphs short and to the point, about 4-5 sentences each. Do not wander around too much unless you are writing a novel.

   Shorter articles are always read first. Keep everything between 300-500 words.

7. Bullets and Subheadings

   Bullets help emphasize the points, and make it pleasant to read. Instead of a reader going through a prose to understand what needs to be done, bullets help pin point your tip.

   Use Subheadings, to create sections under your main focus point of the article. This helps a reader to move from one point to another without going through the pain of reading the whole article.

   With these, you can always keep the attention of the readers on the article, as they gaze through the article.

8. Cite Examples

   Use real life examples of how you did it, what did you encounter. If writing regarding a product or software, see to it that you write its pro’s and cons or some success stories after you got it.

   Keep your paragraphs short and to the point. Do not wander around too much unless you are writing a novel.

9. Proof Read

   “No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.” ~Van Wyck Brooks

   Proof reading is one main thing which everyone tends to be lazy about. Spelling mistakes, grammar errors, annoy readers, as well does ourselves when we read an article full of such ones. Make use of programs like MS Word or so to take care of these silly things.

   Also check the facts you have mentioned for their accuracy.

10. Rewrite the Article for better.

    “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” ~ James Michener

    Read the article next day, and I’m sure you will find something to be rewritten or to be moved over to a better context. This happens with me all the time. Most of my articles have been rewritten at least 5 times.

    You must have heard live stage programs of singers & artists, they improvise the same song over in different stages as they go along. That cues up the audiences minds, and so their enjoyment. For e.g. Singer Hariharan from India improvises his songs on stages, improvises to such an extent that sometimes we have no clue of which song is he going to sing.

    If we take our time re-writing a blog, we could consider that material could bring back past the attention of our readers, attempting to make the alterations necessary for the interested.

These tips will help you write an expert article.
Your suggestions & comments are welcome to help write a better article for all.