Here are three MS Word tools to improve your articles.

1. Check your spelling – This seems obvious. Still many do not use their spell checker. If you use a plain text editor to create your articles, you can easily overlook even the most common of spellings.

Simply copy your text from the plain text editor, like notepad or word pad, and copy it to your word processor and do a spell check. You will be surprised at the misspelled words you may have overlooked.

2. Write at a fifth to seventh grade level. – Use the MS Word Spelling and Grammar checker found under the Review Tab at the top of the MS Word page to determine the age level that you are writing for. After selecting the spell checker and completing the spell check, it will ask you if you want to continue checking the rest of the document.

Respond with yes and a box will pop up called Readability Statistics. At the very bottom of the box is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. You want that score to be between fifth and seventh grade level. Most of your readers will read at that level. If it is a higher grade level, edit with simpler words.

3. Passive sentences – That same box will also give you the number of passive sentences in your article. You want to keep this at a minimum. You should keep passive sentences to no more than two or three for every five-hundred words. There is nothing wrong with passive sentences and there is no hard fast rule to the number of passive sentences you should use. But, you do want to make your sentences action oriented to help the reader move easily throughout the body of your article.

We have looked at three tips that you can use to improve the quality of your articles and ultimately salability of your articles. Keep in mind that content is king and no tools can create unique quality content like you can.

Learn the skill and art of copywriting click here.

Quality content and good copywriting skills are necessarily a must. Let MS Word do some of the work for you. Use the three tips and your quality will improve.

Are you writing good content and still not getting the traffic you need to make sales? The solution is in copywriting. Add copywriting  skills to your quiver of techniques and your sales can go nowhere but up.

If you are serious about improving your article writing and maximizing your sales, visit http://newbieaffiliatesdirectory.info and learn the art and skill of copywriting.

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You must be asking, “What in the world is he talking about?” In article writing the rule is active over passive voice, always. Well, that is a good rule. Yet, we overlook the fact that passive has its place and sometimes is a good choice over active voice. Passive can be a preferable construction.

Besides being sometimes preferable, passive voice can also be profitable. Here are three reasons for choosing passive over active voice.

• Variety
• Emphasis
• Keywords

Variety

Active should be the predominant verb voice that you use throughout your article. It does help the reader understand what you are trying to say. It forces sentences to be more concise.

However, an article that uses active voice exclusively can be too staccato and sound like a monotonous drumbeat. Inserting an occasional passive voice sentence will add some variety. In fact, in some situations, you may not have a choice or it would be awkward to use active voice.

Example (passive): “It is written, ‘Thou shall not use passive voice’.” I do not know if anyone has ever written that statement or not.

To change it to active would be awkward. “God, Shakespeare, somebody wrote, ‘Thou shall not use passive voice’.” The passive sentence has a certain mystique or quality that the active one does not have.

Emphasis

Another opportunity to use passive for emphasis is this example. Suppose you are writing an article on reasons why active is the preferred voice to use. One reason could be:

Example (passive): “Visuals are created in the reader’s mind by active voice.” Here the emphasis is on the reason, visuals. To change it to active: “Active voice creates visuals in the reader’s mind.” It is your choice.

Keywords

Here is where using passive is most profitable. As you know, emphasizing keywords is critical to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As in the previous example, in the passive voice, you can bring those keywords to the forefront in your titles and in your opening paragraphs to capture the reader’s attention.

Example: Let us suppose that your keyword is “apple jelly”. In a title (passive): “Apple jelly is made from good apples.” To change it to active: “Good apples make good apple jelly.” But your keyword, “apple jelly”, may not be read because it is not at the forefront.

Do not abandon passive voice just because your teacher or some computer program tells you it is not the voice of choice. In some cases, it may be the voice of choice.

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In the beginning, you may find it easy to write about something familiar. It is not enough to put pen to paper or punch a keyboard and write a good article.

Although content is king, there are other factors to consider. Here are three tips to consider as you start your writing adventure and ultimately earn money from your efforts.

1) Title

Make sure your title grabs the reader so that he will want to read what you have to say. Use keywords in your title. Still, do not stuff your title with keywords. The title needs to make sense and it should promise the potential reader an answer to his spoken or unspoken question.

2) Keywords

Keywords are important. Without them, there is no exposure, no traffic to your site. Maintain a balance between content and keywords. You can easily insert keywords and keyword phrases in your content that are relevant to your content. Now that the search engines pay attention to Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), there is very little reason to stuff your article with keywords or keyword phrases.

What is LSI? LSI is simply a search engine’s ability to find words related to your keyword not by definition of the keyword alone but more by the context of the keyword in the article.

LSI allows the author much more flexibility in his choice of words and, consequently, it allows an author the ability to write better content and still “sell” his product.

3) Brevity

Keep your articles short 300 – 700 words should be enough, of course, there are always exceptions. Remember that readers these days have a short attention span.

Read any documentation on web browsing and you will find that most web surfers do not spend more than a few seconds looking at a web page. Your article is no different.

There are many more hints and tips that can help writers improve writing skills and earn more money.

Do you want to learn more about article writing? This short article touches only the surface of the art and craft of article writing in internet marketing.

Besides learning the art of writing, you must learn how to market your product with your words and you must learn how to market your own article.

Do you want to learn more about article writing? How to improve your writing? How to make money, writing articles? Of course you do. You owe it to yourself to learn more about article writing and marketing.

CA Perez publishes, The Newbie Affiliates Blog, a candid and informative blog for newbies. Drop by and get your FREE set of 10 videos, SEO 4-Newbies at http://NewbieAffiliatesBlog.com. Don’t forget your 10 FREE videos and be sure to leave a comment.

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The muses and the juices were flowing. Then you wrote your second and third articles. Perhaps you wrote them easily as well. Somewhere along the way, it stopped.  You got writer’s block.  Has this happened to you?  You can overcome it. There are many ways to overcome writer’s block.

Here are four article-writing tips for writer’s block.  They will get you started again.

1)  One school of thought suggests that you start writing to break through writers’ block.  What kind of advice is this? That is exactly what I cannot do!  Are you joking? No. Start by free writing.  Write about anything that comes to mind.  Write crap. Write gibberish. Soon the muses will sing to you again and you can get on with your topic.  Just write.

2) Don’t begin at the beginning.  Start in the middle or at the conclusion of your topic. Very often, the hardest part of writing an article is the beginning. So do not start there. Start in the middle of the article or even start writing the conclusion. Just write.

3) Take a walk. Do something physical. Mow the lawn.  Get away from the computer. Take a pen and paper, if an idea comes to mind write it down. When you are done, do step two. Just write.

4) Pick a subject you might be passionate about or at least interested in and read as much information about it as you can.  Wait a day or two and then start writing off the top of your head as if you were talking to a friend about your interest.  Ernest Hemingway’s editor, Maxwell Perkins said, “Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.” Just write.

There are many more hints and tips that can help writers improve writing skills and earn more money.  This short article touches only the surface of the art and craft of article writing in internet marketing. Besides learning the art of writing, you must learn how to sell your product with your words and you must learn how to market your own article.

Do you want to learn more about article writing? How to improve your writing? How to make money writing articles?  Of course you do.  You owe it to yourself to learn more about article writing and marketing.

Learn how to write; how to make money; and how to publish your work. 

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It makes perfect sense, but somehow this article marketing method is grossly overlooked by beginners and gurus alike.

Here’s the logic of why submitting articles directly to ezines is a powerful and effective strategy.

When you submit your article to an article directory (and you should) you are one of MANY other articles on the site.

Maybe your article will be found – maybe not.

But when your article appears in an ezine it is the ONLY article in that ezine.

So, every reader of that ezine can read YOUR article without the distraction of a million other articles all screaming “read me!”

Don’t get me wrong, article directories are great. But if you are marketing with articles, or want to, and are not submitting directly to ezines you are leaving money on the table.

I know that’s true because I’ve been there. When I was first a member of the DOE (Directory of Ezines) I submitted articles as often as I could. And it worked.

Effective article marketing is a BIG part of how I went from being a member of the DOE to owning the company.

How can you find the right ezines for your articles?

The DOE of course!

Between our database of ezines and the personal consulting I offer it’s the best value online.

Visit Charlie Page at his Directory of Ezines.

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Let’s assume that you are new to Internet marketing and you choose article writing as your primary means of generating traffic. To make your article pretty you choose some exotic beautiful font, pleasing to the eye.  You prepare your article with great care only to discover when you submit your article that the publisher insists the article be 65 characters per line.

If you have ever tried to adjust the margins and manually count the characters in each line to meet the required 65 characters per line, you have experienced total frustration.  If you use MS Word, most of the fonts are what are called proportional fonts.  Their widths vary with the length of the line.  So no matter how you adjust the margins to the longest line and count out your 65 characters per line, the proportional font characters per line just keep on changing.  It’s a nightmare.

There’s a simple solution. Use a font that does not vary with the line length.  Monospace fonts, also known as fixed width fonts do not vary.  All characters are of a fixed width. For example, a font size of 10 equates to 12 characters per inch, a font size of 12 equates to 10 characters per inch. True Type Courier New, Consolas, and DejaVu Sans Mono are three examples of Monospace fonts.  You can search the Internet for others.

Here’s is a simple solution to formatting your text with Monospace font. You can create your document in whatever font your eye finds pleasing. Copy it and paste it to a new document using a 12 point Monospace font.  On an 8.5×11.5 sheet your margins are preset to allow 6.5 inches per line of text.  A Monospace font of 12 points equals 10 characters per inch.  Ten characters per inch times 6.5 inches equal 65 characters per line.  Voila!  You’re done. By simply changing the margins to a 6 inch line you now have 60 characters per line.

If you want one-on-one personal consulting on article writing or any other Internet marketing subject, Charlie Page offers it with his Directory of Ezines subscription.  I have consulted with him live on the phone on several occasions.  His advice is invaluable.

Article Writing – Adjusting Characters per Line – A Useful Tip©
by C. A. Perez

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