Writing Articles Without Grammar Skills

English grammar may not be the terrible beast some people make it out to be, but it’s not a friendly one either. Even with a tight grip around the basics of spelling and grammar, it’s hard to find the time and actually adhere to those rules if you’re writing articles on a very tight schedule.

There’s time for money, but no time for grammar.

The average time people spend on a 500 word article is somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, at least to have hopes of writing for money online. It’s hard enough to even make sense of your thoughts in that short while. Save time by running your articles through free online grammar checkers.

Avoid words you don’t know the exact definition for.

English has a rich vocabulary for every occasion, but when you’re considering to include a term that you’re not very sure about, it’s best to instead go for a simpler word. If the sentence does not allow for a simpler word to be used, it’s usually a much better idea to rewrite that sentence than put in a word that might confuse your readers and leave them wondering about what you really meant while stumbling inattentively through the rest of the article.

Don’t use a language style you’re not accustomed to.

Online readers usually don’t care about how sophisticated your vocabulary is or the complexity of sentence structure in your articles, as long as they receive the exact kind of content they’re looking for. They were brought to your article by specific search terms, looking for specific type of answers or information. That’s what you should focus on, instead of trying to be funny, or formal, or neutral enough.

Content is His Majesty the King of online writing.

Ideally, the content you publish online should be of ‘high quality’, but it’s not always possible to conform to every single quality guideline Google or any other authority wants you to follow. Relevance of your content, on the other hand, is another matter entirely and that’s exactly what you should be working on in your writing.

Stay to the point with your written content.

If you’re writing for money, you’re probably already aiming at specific keywords when publishing articles online. More often than not, the information required by a person inputting those keywords can be expressed in a couple of simple sentences. Write those sentences, explain them in some detail and be done with it. In other words, keep your articles short.

Avoid the pitfalls of formal writing.

Emulating formal-sounding English coupled with a neutral tone is one of the most common (and silliest) sins of article writing. Arguably, Wikipedia-style writing is some kind of a hallmark to all new article authors around the web. Whether or not that is true or should be true is a good topic for another article, but my advice to all those formal-sounding neutral-speaking English learners is simple.

If you can’t do it well, don’t even try.

Articles written in formal English are supposed to sound more serious than those done with informal English in mind. That’s not the case when an author tries to appear unbiased and very knowledgeable in the topic, but instead happens to sound like an article spinner paired with a dictionary of (misspelled) legal terms.

Focus on your strong points.

You definitely have some strong points, even when it comes to such specific skills as online article writing. Highlighting the advantages of your writing and hiding the weaknesses will help your articles achieve better ranking on Google and in the minds of your readers. If grammar is not one of your strong points, don’t bite off more than you can chew and simply keep writing in what style you think is right.

But don’t take my word for it, read this collection of useful articles about writing!