Article #2 \u2013 Structuring Your Blog & Presentation<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article #3 \u2013 Style<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article #4 \u2013 Common Pitfalls<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article #5 \u2013 Opening Your Blog<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article #6 \u2013 <\/em>Closing Your Blog<\/strong><\/em> And Explaining Difficult Concepts<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Leaving aside the fundamentals, which I have already covered<\/a>, there are a number of common mistakes that are often made by writers even of a relatively high level. I have identified 3 of them, and they are recurring enough that they deserve their own article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weasel words are those words which mean little or nothing, but which we employ because we feel they make a sentence easier or more natural to read. Words such as \u2018Just\u2019, \u2018Like\u2019, \u2018So\u2019, \u2018Now\u2019, \u2018Quite\u2019, \u2018Then\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every writer has weasel words of their own, sometimes a lot more specific and atypical than those above. This is inevitable, because we inherit them from speech, where their purpose is to extend our sentences and give us more time to think. Unfortunately, they are utterly counterproductive in writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no surefire method to counter weasel words except to be aware of their existence, keep an eye open, and get rid of them when they appear. The sentence \u2018Let\u2019s just sit down and think about it\u2019 can be simplified to \u2018Let\u2019s sit down and think about it\u2019 with no loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Granted, the sentence above also doesn\u2019t gain<\/em> very much except a little brevity, but the overall benefit of removing weasel words is incremental<\/strong>. Readers are much better at noticing your writing quirks than you\u2019ll ever be, and if a certain unnecessary word appears 4 times in the same article, they will perceive it as a stylistic limit. The more weasel words you remove, the more you foreclose this perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you think that you don\u2019t use any weasel words yourself \u2013 then get to work! That almost certainly means you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certain very talented writers can fill their articles with tangents and still make them compelling to read, but in the vast, vast<\/em> majority of cases, stepping away from the central topic\/argument of the blog has the effect of instantly losing the reader\u2019s interest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not just talking about including personal anecdotes in a technical article. I mean literally any sentence that does not directly contribute to the central argument of the article<\/strong>, regardless of how appropriate it may be in terms of register or tone<\/a>. If you come across such a sentence when redrafting your article, excise it mercilessly. If you find one and you\u2019re not sure if it is or isn\u2019t important, excise it too \u2013 if you\u2019re not sure, it almost certainly means it wasn\u2019t important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that you love this or that particular passage makes no difference \u2013 every writer falls in love with what they write, but the fact that you\u2019re particularly fond of a sentence doesn\u2019t mean that the sentence should be there, nor that it serves the article.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCOMMON PITFALLS<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
1. Weasel Words<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. Tangents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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