Quick Tip: Not To Be

We’d all like to think that our thoughts transfer from our brains to the keyboard in precise, punchy, perfect prose — but anything we write benefits from a once-over (or twice, or thrice-over). When editing, we clarify specific sentences and hone our overall message.

A key step in editing eliminates unnecessary words. Unnecessary words drag your writing down; since they don’t contribute to your message, they throw a roadblock between your thoughts and the reader. Finding and nixing them moves readers from “Hmm, this seems interesting!” to “Genius!” that much faster. One simple way to do this? Vigilance against weak “be” verbs.

Exploring the Reader: Pet Topics

In Owning your Reader: Pet Topics, Michelle looked at some of the tags that keep her Reader abuzz, before opening up the conversation to the tags and topics that most fascinate you. Today I’d like to pick up on that idea and explore a few more tags, and see what’s grabbing your attention lately.

Quick Tip: Focus Longer Posts Like a Five-Paragraph Essay

While blogs are great places to toss up quick thoughts, lots of bloggers also use their sites to showcase in-depth posts — take a look at the WPlongform topic in the Reader, and you’ll find everything from personal essays to meticulously researched academic papers. Longer-form pieces give you the opportunity to fully flesh out a thought, exploring all the nuances, but they can be challenging to write; often, the longer length seems like an opportunity to include every related idea, until you’re left with a precarious pile of content that doesn’t quite jive.

Okay, maybe that’s just me. But on the chance that it’s you, too — or if you’re new to longer-form writing and want a little guidance — one of my favorite ways to stay focused is that old elementary school standby, the five-paragraph essay. It’s not for every post, subject, or writer, but it can be a helpful tool for organizing your thoughts.

Quick Tip: Three Steps for Perfect Proofing

There’s a tedious but necessary final step before hitting “publish”: proofreading. If you’re anything like me, proofreading is the antithesis of writing, cruelly shunting you from an intuitive, creative flow to the much-less-fulfilling world of misplaced commas and accidental their/there/they’re confusion.

Still, it’s gotta be done; an error dulls the shine from the most sparkling prose, and even personal, stream-of-consciousness posts benefit from good copyediting. Try these three steps to become your own best editor:

Quick Tip: Show (and Hide) Your Widgets

If you missed the announcement of our widget visibility feature over on en.blog.wordpress.com, we wanted to let you know you’ve got a handy new tool in the widgets section to control the visibility of each widget. You can show or hide a widget based on rules you set.

Want to see how it works and learn to use it creatively? Head to Appearance » Widgets in your dashboard and we’ll get started!

Owning Your Reader: Your “Pet” Topics

We’ve talked about exploring the WordPress.com Reader and making it your own — customizing your topic listings, and trying new search terms to find blogs that speak to you. Not only is it fun, but making connections with other blogs is the best way to draw people back to yours.

Since we’re all poking around the Reader, we may as well share the collective wisdom. What are your favorite topics to follow? What offbeat search terms have unearthed hidden gems? There’s no need to horde your finds; the more readers the merrier! Here are a few of my favorites; what are yours?