CREATING BETTER CONTENT: SEVEN-PART SERIES
Part 2. Creating Better Content: Publishing Options, Writing, Spelling, Punctuation, and Capitalisation
A seven-part series that explains why it’s important to create your best content, not just any content
In part one of this series we covered Beginning your ‘why’ journey, The challenges editors face, and I asked: Why, exactly, are you writing?
In this, part two, we’ll look at Self-publishing vs publications, The challenge of good writing, plus Language, spelling, punctuation and capitalization.
Self-publishing vs publications
Everyone begins by self-publishing on Medium. This simply means you write articles and publish them yourself. You are your own editor, so any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors you leave in the text will be there for all to see, and your writing style will go unchallenged.
This won’t let you off the hook content-wise, of course, as Medium has strict rules about what you can’t publish. Familiarize yourself with the rules here:
Think of a publication as a magazine providing content in a particular area of interest. Unlike a periodical, they’re updated 24/7 with new content. Publications exist on every subject imaginable, and there are thousands of them. Depending on which source you look at, Smedian says there are 12,507 publications, whilst Toppub says there are 15,766. Toppub not only provides better information about individual publications, such as Illumination, but it’s generally accepted as being more accurate.
However, as Medium allows anyone to set up a publication, many are started with great enthusiasm but later dwindle and become dormant.
Of 12k-15k publications available, only around 50 currently occupy the top slot with over 100,000 followers each (the largest; The Startup currently has over 3/4 million followers). However, writing for publications is not all about going for the biggest and the best, as there are many whose audience will be tuned to your writing subjects and style.
Each publication’s guidelines will spell out what they will, and will not, accept as submissions and how to go about submitting your work. Once you’re accepted as a writer, publishing content is a different experience from self-publishing because a professional editor will review your submission prior to it being accepted for publishing. There is also no guarantee they will accept your article.
The publication editors are there to curate content that suits the style, purpose, and quality standards of their publication. They help to maintain these standards and may reject your submission if it doesn’t meet the criteria or is of poor quality overall.
Editors are not there to correct your spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes, so don’t be tempted to test them.
The challenge of good writing
Creating content that’s good enough for an editor to want to publish is challenging. Why? Because it’s not all about what you write. Your story may be excellent for many reasons, and the editor may really like what you’ve created. But that alone doesn’t make it good enough to publish. That’s your challenge. It’s not necessarily about what you write but how you write it.
To be a consistently good writer on Medium, you need to have a good understanding of spelling, punctuation, grammar, correct word usage, page layout, structure, styling, photo usage or video content, using web links, and a bit about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The good news is that everything you need to know is freely available both on and off Medium, and it’s easily within your gift to apply it.
Let’s start with language
If you’re a native English speaker/writer, and English is your first language, your vocabulary is likely to be around 15,000–20,000 words, more if you’re a specialist, scientist, academic, etc. If English is your second language, your vocabulary drops significantly to around 2000–3000 words. That can make it difficult to select the ‘right’ words from the 171,146 words currently in use in the English language.
Interestingly, the greater your vocabulary, the fewer words you’ll typically use to express yourself, especially when writing. However, don’t confuse this with trying to find long, complicated words to replace a few short, simple words. That will just make it harder for your audience to read.
Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization
SPELLING: There really is no excuse for leaving spelling mistakes in anything you write. This is more true now than ever because spell checkers are built-in or freely available. Nobody likes to see spelling mistakes, but it happens to us all from time to time. When you spot a mistake in something you’ve previously written and sent or published, it’s acutely embarrassing, so an occasional slip-up won’t see you sent to speller’s jail, but your goal should be for there to be zero spelling mistakes.
PUNCTUATION: Mastering punctuation can be tricky, even for native English writers, even though there are only 14 punctuation symbols. Despite there being only 14, those little symbols provide sentence structure and will guide the reader on how to read your text. Punctuation is like an instructional language all of its own that sits inside the actual language.
We’ve all received emails that are just a string of words written exactly as the person is thinking. There are no capitalised words, no punctuation, and no structure. It’s all written as a single sentence from start to finish.
It’s an extreme example, but writing in this lazy way forces the reader to work hard to figure out where the sentence breaks are. Is ‘river’ is a body of water or a person’s name? Does “I find inspiration from cooking my family and my dog” mean we should call the police.
It’s important for you to work hard on understanding punctuation if you want publications to accept your articles and your audience to read them.
Lynn Truss is, amongst other things, an author who is probably most famous for her tough stance on correcting other people’s English:
“No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, “Good food at it’s best”, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.”
Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, are a funny, but tough and educational look at the mistakes people make with punctuation.
CAPITALIZATION: Failing to use capital letters in words that require them is a common mistake because there are a few rules to get your head around. However, it shouldn’t be difficult to know that a politician is not a Politician, any more than an apple is not an Apple — unless you’re referring to the tech company.
Here’s a quick ’n’ dirty guide to when you should capitalize words:
- The first word of a sentence.
- Names, cities, countries, nationalities, languages, companies, religions, and political parties.
- Days, months, and holidays, but not seasons.
- The first word of a quote when quote is a complete sentence.
- Time periods and events (the Middle Ages. World War 2) — not always, but mostly.
- Most words in titles.
The last one, known as title-case, does little to ease the confusion, but it’s the accepted standard for titles, even though it looks wrong. It feels better to write, ‘How to have a better life’ (see the first point above), but the correct way to write it is, ‘How to Have a Better Life’. The short, connecting words such as ‘to’, ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘in’ are not usually capitalized.
Remember, publication editors are generally too busy to be correcting basic punctuation and capitalization, but they may still reject your submission because of it, especially if it happens repeatedly.
Summary — part two
There’s quite a lot to get your head around with self-publishing and publications. I know it took me a while even to grasp the concept of publications, but I’ve found a community that provides help and support.
There’s a lot in this series about the basics of written English, and I know that if that’s something you struggle with, it can be hard work to get it right. Yes, there’ are a lot of resources online to help you — there’s very little you can’t Google and find an answer to — but don’t be afraid to ask for help. Lots of people find it tough to start with, but don’t let that get in the way of whatever it is you have to share with us as it will get easier the more you do.
Coming up in part three:
Part three of this series looks at Understanding grammar, Using the right words, and Online tools to aid your writing
Series links:
Part 1. Your ‘Why’ Journey, Editors’ Challenges, and Why Are You Writing?
Part 4. Outline and Structure, Clichés and Jargon, Audience, Editing and Reading Aloud
Part 5. Page Structure and Styling, Main Headings and Subheadings, and Using images