Editing Your Blog Posts

By Laurie Epps

The hardest thing for any of us to do as writers is to edit our own writing. 

There are a lot of reasons for this: including we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again, but we also sometimes are too close to our writing and can't see the mistakes anymore.

Today, let my reflections guide you with my mentor's book, Connections: Social Media and Networking Techniques for Writers. Edie Melson is well respected as a social media expert, so let's get started, shall we?

There's just something different about blogging from our other writing endeavors. Somehow, we just get lazy or sloppy. We skip steps, we go straight to composing on the blog template.

Here are some idea's to avoid these mistakes from Edie:

• Compose your posts as a Word document without frilly formatting. (I need to take the extra time to do this.) It will not only be less distracting to read, but Word has spell check.
• Composing your posts this way also gives you a backup of all of your work.
• Aside from spelling errors, there's a range of words that have more than one spelling, and with all different meanings such as: two/to/too, their/there/they're and so on.

Once you have looked for the preliminary errors, you'll want to cut and paste your copy to your blog, and add the photo's or illustrations.

Now writing for the Internet isn't like other types of writing. There's a basic concept I've learned in college. The rule goes like this: Use your white spaces effectively. Basically, that means to remember that lots of dense text is hard on the reader, so use shorter paragraphs, and double space between them.

Lastly, make sure you read your post aloud to yourself. You might feel self conscious doing this, but it catches a magnitude of errors, not just when you're blogging, but in general.

Connect Activity:

• Make a list of words you overuse on your blog. Or better yet, ask a friend to review your blog and let you know what words they are. (For example, I've got to look out for "like" and "however".)
• Start creating a list of your common errors. I recommend printing off this list, and keeping it by you when you compose your posts.
• Make an additional list that has common slang words relevant to your blog's focus.

What are some tools that help you when you're writing on your blog? Please share them with us below.

Next week, come back for us to talk about Common Mistakes to Avoid. (On your blog.)

Can't get enough social media tips? Check out Edie's blog at:
http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com

Laurie Epps is a senior at Anderson University majoring in Creative Writing. Already Laurie is most published as a feature article writer, essayist, and poet. A seeker of beauty and world traveler, Laurie hopes to grow into a career in travel writing illuminating the many stories that make us human despite our differences. Currently, Laurie also has a Thoughtful Thursday column dedicated to the fine art of poetry.