7 Easy Writing Techniques To Make Your Blog Posts Flawless

 

Grammar and mechanics need to be perfect in your blog. It’s one of the pillars that hold up professionalism.
I’m not here to nitpick a blog’s grammar. Grammar errors don’t really confuse us. We’re smarter than that. We still understand what’s being said.

BUT while wrong grammar doesn’t create communication barriers at all, it does turn off your readers. They’re like huge splatters on your display windows. Who allows dirty display windows?

Grammar lapses are perfectly all right among friends and family. But academically and professionally? They’re embarrassing. I’ve been there myself. I publish a post, and then notice errors while I reread it. But it’s already live! Phew.

Writers are often perfectionists (This is why most of us are ‘aspiring’ novelists, haha. We try it, grimace at our attempt, and leave it for later for when we’re better). Instead, try my checklist for the perfect blog post:

1. If you can, leave it overnight or a few hours to cook.

This one is #1 because of its importance. Do something else. Write something else. Familiarity means blindness to what you can correct and improve, so make yourself unfamiliar with what you just wrote. Giving it a rest also brings fresh insight. You stop being the writer and become a reader instead.

You realize that this section could be expanded, or this one could be cut. You discern if you’ve explained enough or too much. And how many times have we regretted publishing or submitting something, because our brains belatedly came up with new angles or ideas a few hours afterward?

2. Always reread: Read backwards.

Start from the last word and backwards. Misspellings and punctuation mistakes come to light. Do this one sentence or one paragraph at a time, or even start from the very bottom of the whole post. This forces your brain to be analytical rather than familiar with what you’ve just written. This tip is handy if you need to publish immediately and can’t ‘cook’ the post.

3. Read aloud. Change fonts or layout.

This takes care of awkward sentences. If you run out of breath, that sentence is too long. If it doesn’t sound like something you’d say in conversation, rewrite it.

Some people swear by printing, but that’s rather wasteful. Here’s an alternate: have an ‘editing’ font and layout. This simple shift also tricks your mind and eyes into refresh.

4. Trim the flab.

Depending on your niche, you want to sound authoritative. Try this now. Look at every “can” and “will” in your writing. Do they earn their keep? Are they absolutely necessary? Look at these examples I edited myself:

 

Start from the last word and back. You’ll notice misspellings and any punctuation mistakes. You can do this one sentence or one paragraph at a time…	Start from the last word and back. Misspellings and punctuation mistakes come to light. Do this one sentence or one paragraph at a time…
This will force your brain to be analytical…	This forces your brain to be analytical…

I rewrote those weak verbs into present tense and suddenly, they’re no longer tentative and cowering. They’re confident and urgent.

Other flab to cut:

• “there are” “that” “which are” and their variations
• Adverbs and adjectives. Replace adverbs with strong verbs. And delete adjectives and passive construction. Use powerful and succinct descriptive writing. Show, don’t tell.

“It was cold” is weak and lazy compared to “We could see our breath.”

• These words.  
• Wishy-washy words:
  • seems to be
  • it appears
  • I believe
  • In my opinion…
  • You may disagree, but…
  • And other versions that only make you sound spineless. You think you’re being polite, but they’re unnecessary. It’s your blog. Of course it’s your opinion. Readers like conviction and authority.  

5. Check your tricksters.

These common writing errors trip us all up every now and then, and I’ve seen even posts from big influencers wearing one or two of these like an eye-catching ear stud. Which one of them do you always mix up?

Grammar Girl has 101 of them gathered in a book.  

6. Check your verbs.

In English, we’re lucky to have simpler verb conjugations (versions of a single word to denote tense, gender, even mood, etc). So check if what you used is the right one. For example, you mean ‘dragged’ not ‘drug’. Or had been, instead of was.

7. Check your clauses.

Use them sparingly. Sometimes they earn their keep. Most times, nope.

Without grammatical jargon, clauses are simply those parts of a sentence that can either stand alone (insubordinate clause) or not (subordinate). You identify clauses easily. They’ve got a comma between them.

I just demonstrated clauses in the previous three sentences! If they can stand alone, use a period instead of a comma (or a colon or a semicolon). If they can’t stand alone, rearrange that flowery prose.

“When looking for marketing tools that are easy to use, I go to Neil Patel and Brian Dean.”	I go to Neil Patel and Brian Dean for easy-to-use marketing tools.
Without grammatical jargon, clauses are simply those parts of a sentence that can either stand alone or not.	That sentence shows clauses that earn their keep.

 

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That’s it, really. When you remove subordinate clauses and flab/wishy-washy words, you naturally cut down 20%, the recommended trim work for all writing.

Read backwards or aloud and you edit yourself without having to copy and paste everything into Word for a run of spell-check. Sure, use tools for a thorough, last-minute check, but verify what they want to correct. They don’t understand context.

Read a lot. You can’t write at all if you haven’t sampled concise writing. You won’t have the eyes and mind to edit yourself if you haven’t experienced sparkling, conversational posts. You don’t have to fry your brain with grammatical terms, but if you read a lot, you’ll absorb the nuances of great writing.

Have some self-editing tips yourself? Have recommended books or sources, like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and the Purdue Writing Lab? Share with us in the comments!!

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