Please be sure to use the correct pronoun when referring to something. Many writers substitute “they” for the more appropriate “it” when referring to companies, websites, or animal breeds.

A Company – Bloomers, Co. sells underwear for the modern man or woman, but its return policy is very strict.

A Website – Bloomers.com is a website that sells underwear. It is easily navigable and has high-resolution photos of products.

Dog Breed – The poodle breed is famous for its coat.

Please be sure to use the most appropriate pronoun, or your article could be rejected for grammar issues. Thanks.

There has been a rash (and yes, they literally make me itch) of articles lately that have contained run-on sentences. Run-on sentences are characterized by the omission of punctuation to separate clauses or complete sentences from one another. Run-on sentences have no place in professional writing and are easy to avoid.

If you’re in doubt about whether or not the group of words you have written is a run-on sentence, simply break it up into two sentences if each part can stand on its own.

Incorrect:

You may find it difficult to house train your small dog, they have small bladders.

When you go to a mortgage broker keep in mind that he or she will run a credit report and be sure to ask him or her about how that will affect your loan.

Correct:

You may find it difficult to house train your small dog. Small dogs have small bladders.

When you go to a mortgage broker, keep in mind that he or she will run a credit report. Be sure to ask him or her how that will affect your loan.

Subtitles are still a part of titles, and must be capitalized. They should also be separated from the main title with a colon or a dash. Commas, periods, or, (gasp) NO punctuation is not acceptable.

Correct:

• Student Loans: Getting Your Money’s Worth
• Natural Disasters – Protecting Yourself

Incorrect:

• Student Loans, Getting Your Money’s Worth
• Student Loans: Getting your money’s worth
• Natural Disasters Protecting Yourself

If you’re a single freelancer, chances are good that you don’t have health insurance. And, if you do have health insurance, chances are also good that your premiums are going up, your coverage is fluctuating, and you’re overall displeased with how the insurance company jerks you around. So here’s your weekend writing idea. Write about the health insurance industry.

• How does one find a good health insurance company?
• What does a person who does not have health insurance do when they get sick?
• What are some ways to save on health care?
• How does a person find doctors in their health insurance network?
• How can a person object to a health insurance company’s decision?
• What do you do if you have a “pre-existing condition”?
• What are lawmakers trying to do to change the health insurance system? (Are they really doing anything?)
• What can individuals do to take a stand against the corrupt health insurance system?
• How is health care different for the insured vs. the uninsured?

Reposted from forum “sticky.”
Modern standards favor the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is that last comma before the “and” in the end of a series of things.

For example – the Oxford comma appears in these sentences:
We serve coffee, tea, and lemonade.
I can make scarves in blue and yellow, green and white, red and black, violet, and gold.

In the first sentence, while the comma is preferred, foregoing the use of this comma will probably not cause ambiguity (that is, I know of no culture that serves coffee, or tea&lemonade–though you can see where I’m going with this). However, in the second sentence, the subtraction of the final comma would cause confusion:
I can make scarves in blue and yellow, green and white, red and black, violet and gold. The reader may mistake the colors “violet and gold” to be a color combination like those mentioned formerly.

However, an Oxford comma can also cause ambiguity when used incorrectly. It is important to remember to group items that should be grouped together (as in the scarves example above) and to separate those which need separated, up until the very end of the series.

This is probably my favorite explanation of the Oxford comma:

Although either style may cause ambiguity (in “We considered Miss Roberts for the roles of Marjorie, David’s mother, and Louise”, are there two roles or three?), the style that omits the comma is more likely to do so: “Tom, Peter, and I went swimming.” (Without the comma, one might think that the sentence was addressed to Tom.) “I ordered sandwiches today. I ordered turkey, salami, peanut butter and jelly, and roast beef.” Without that last comma, one would have a MIGHTY weird sandwich! — Gabe Wiener. James Pierce reports that an author whose custom it was to omit the comma dedicated a novel: “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

(From http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxabandc.html)

However, you can find an equally amusing explanation of the Oxford comma here:
http://www.siue.edu/IS/WRITING/NewsletterC/Issue%208/page3.html

So please use the Oxford comma where appropriate and make sure your commas don’t give, er, unnecessary pause.

Reposted from forum “sticky.”

Hyphenated adjectives should be hyphenated. Just because you don’t know how to use a hyphen isn’t an excuse to ignore the necessary hyphen within hyphenated adjectives.

Combinations of words that precede and jointly describe a noun should be hyphenated. For example:

easy-to-read content
one-of-a-kind dog
much-needed hyphens
well-written script

However:
Your content is almost always easy to read.
My dog, Blaze, is one of a kind.
Hyphens, much needed in the writing world, are often neglected.
If I wrote a script, it would probably not be well written.

Here are even better examples and a more complete explanation. It’s short and not too pedantic, so I encourage you to take the little quiz included:

http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/040201.htm

In addition, if you’re making up an adjective that is a string of words, it requires hyphens:

too-expensive-for-words truffle sauce

a very Doctor Zhivago-meets-I Love Lucy movie

Writers unfamiliar with how Constant Content works often waste time by “answering” public requests without actually having any content to offer. When a customer places a public request, he or she expects to be presented with content to choose from. There are plenty of authors who can write for their request – customers already know this. Answering a request by saying, “I can write these articles for you,” is pretty useless, and rarely garners a future sale.

If you are truly interested in catching the attention of a customer or getting a sale through a public request, write a relevant article and link to it through the customer’s Q/A. In the meantime, build up your article portfolio by writing on spec, so that the customer, if he or she is interested, can check out the other work you have for sale.

One reason customers like Constant Content is that they can get their articles immediately. They don’t have to wait with bated breath to see if their chosen author will write content that meets their needs within their deadline – like they may have to through other content sales sites. By providing content, you’ve proven that you can work swiftly to meet a customer’s needs. Even if they don’t pick up your article, they may consider your work for their next project, knowing that you can produce.

As most of you know, I’ve been a long-time fan of Slate. (Recently, its content seems to have taken a dive in hopes of attracting bottom-feeders, but that’s another issue.) Slate runs a column, written by various contributers and interns, called Explainer. Explainer’s writers researches a topic relevant to the news to give the reader the inside scoop on the subject. Explainer has answered question in the past like, “Can a doctor force you to undergo a procedure against your will?” and “How do you survive a 47-storey fall?”

Your weekend writing idea is to write and Explainer-like article. Those writing for the Explainer interview experts and do research – you’ll probably just want to do research, since this is an article written on spec. However, concentrate on surprising questions that will garner even more interesting answers.

Maybe, instead of offering suggestions for questions that I don’t know the answers to, I’ll open up discussion to you. What’s a burning question you have that you’d like someone else to research and answer? Feel free to discuss here or in the forum – whatever’s easiest and most conducive to interaction. For inspiration, click on the link to Explainer above – you’ll see just how creative you can be, and you might get some ideas for other articles while you’re at it.

To add interest, improve flow, and illustrate your sophistication as a writer, always try to vary the sentence structure within paragraphs. Many writers get into the Sally, Dick, and Jane rut, where their sentences are simple constructions of subject-verb-object. This makes for dull reading… but it also can insult the intelligence of the average reader, who is capable of processing information that is presented in sentences of varying lengths and diverse constructions.

We’ll use an example from Atlas Shrugged. (Everyone is always suspicious that I harbor Objectivist tendencies when I gush over Ayn Rand, however, this interest was abandoned long ago. Ayn Rand’s writing, and her obsession with perfection, is still to be admired. Sure, she was a little bats, but her writing is incredible.)

The following excerpt is written using the same sentence structure, over and over:

Her leg was sculptured by the tight sheen of the stocking. Its long line ran straight over an arched instep to the tip of a high-heeled pump. It had a feminine elegance that seemed out of place in the dusty train car. It was also oddly incongruous with the rest of her.

Ayn Rand’s original:

Her leg, sculptured by the tight sheen of the stocking, its long line running straight, over an arched instep, to the tip of a foot in a high-heeled pump, had a feminine elegance which seemed out of place in the dusty train car and oddly incongruous with the rest of her.

While this type of writing contains too much flourish for article writing, and the sentence presents information in a more complex manner than you would want to, notice how the description joins like elements into a seamless whole without butchering it into jarring pieces (just like Dagny’s leg is a long, unbroken line). Whether you’re writing about Dagny Taggart’s sexy games, or the health benefits of carrots, you can still create flow that makes reading and absorbing information interesting.

Uninteresting sentence structure:

Carrots are healthy. They contain large amounts of vitamin A. Eating carrots is good for your eyes. There is some evidence that eating carrots will help you see in the dark.

Better sentence structure:

Carrots, which contain large amounts of vitamin A, are extremely healthy. In fact, carrots are great for eye health, and there is some evidence that eating carrots will help you see in the dark.

Learning new ways to construct sentences is as simple as opening up a magazine, reading from a respected online publication, or picking up your favorite classic. Of course, you should always adapt your writing style for your topic, your audience, and clarity. However, what you learn from others can always be distilled into basic principles to use to improve your own skills.

I consistently see submissions with common errors that no one here should be making. If you’re making one of the following errors, it’s time to review your rules and spend some time practicing writing and using the rules that made our language understandable.

It’s and its are not interchangeable.

Lose and loose are two different words.

You’re and your should never be confused with each other.

Possessive words require apostrophes where necessary. There’s a problem if you aren’t using them.

Random words do not take capital letters. There are rules about what words are capitalized.

On the other hand, proper nouns must be capitalized. United States is a proper noun.

If you start a clause in the middle of a sentence with a comma, that clause must be enclosed by another comma at the end.

The only time a period should be preceded by a period is in the case of an ellipses. Ellipses are indicated (space)(period)(space)(period)(space)(period)(space) or ( . . . ). They are not a random number of dots lined up next to each other (…….), and should be used sparingly.

Many times, you do not need to break out a style guide to learn simple rules. You can pick up a book off the shelf, go to a trusted, literary internet source like Slate, or simply do a Google search. The information is out there, and to be successful, it is important to have the desire to seek it out and make sure that your writing obeys the most basic rules.