Best way to write an article professionally

I agree with hildred's answer that a review of the basics is in order here: Sentence structure, grammar, and so on.

There are no standards for general-interest articles, but academic papers do have such standards. Without knowing what, exactly, you want to write, it's hard to give you advice on structure. But I can give a few suggestions that might help you get started.

Read a lot

Since you want to write articles, read a lot of articles of the type you want to produce. You'll get a thought for how people choose to structure them.

Just write

Everyone has thousands of terrible sentences in them. It's in your interest to get them out of you as quickly as possible. (I'm paraphrasing Chuck Jones here.) It's okay to write pages and pages of terrible essays. It's good practice.

Structure

Try ordering your work. Put related points next to each other, try to eliminate redundancies. Adding paragraph breaks helps.

The three paragraph essay is an old format used in schools. It's oversimplified, but a good way to learn to write until you learn on your own. It goes like this:

1. Introductory paragraph - tell people what the thesis is. (i.e., tell 'em what you're gonna say.)
2. Your main essay - what you want to say. (This can be more than one paragraph.)
3. Concluding paragraph

You can also try outlining. For this answer, an outline would look like this:

1. General thoughts on standards
2. Read a lot of stuff
3. Vomit out text, gain experience
4. Common basic structure devices
5. Conclusion

Also

Reading the question on this site may also help. A basic book on writing like The Elements of Style might be a good idea. (There are questions about those on this site, and I'd look for something brief.)

posted over 10 years ago

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Neil‭

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