How to Put it There Too

Last month, I wrote about How to Make Your Content Attractive and Effective. That covered everything from font choice, text alignment, white space and the all-important Content is King. The bottom line is to present your writing in the best possible way for easy online reading, the opposite of which drives your visitors away from your blog or web site.

The point has been made several times and several different ways that the most important thing is to watch your English!  No, it's no fun, I know; but if you want to be taken seriously in your writing, then take your writing seriously. The harsh reality is that many readers are like me, and once I see three mistakes in one post, it's not likely I'll ever read another post on your blog again.

Common mistakes I see are Internets and informations. This one is easy - there are no such things! There is one Internet. It is a proper name and therefore capitalized, and by its very own nature - a vast web of connected computers that cover the world - there can be only one. It is always, just the Internet. You can have bits and pieces of information, information being the global term meaning you have a lot of bits and pieces that all constitute information. Both words are singular and can only be singular because they encompass a large grouping or class of something.

The two mistakes I see most often have to do with the misuse of there/their/they're and to/too/two. These are best explained by using them in sentences:

I want you to put that over there. It fits best there. There is a place.

Their hands were cold. If it wasn't for their breathing, they wouldn't be heard. Their is more than one person's thing, meaning it is plural and possessive.

They're going away tomorrow. They're thinking about holding their breath. They're is a contraction of two words - "they are." Again, "they" is plural, more than one.

I am going to work. In order to do it the right way, you have to learn English. The word "to" is best thought of as a direction.

You're going to work too? Add that one with them too. In this usage, "too" means the same thing as "also."

There are too many of them. You've gone too far. Used this way, "too" means many or more than is necessary or expected.

There are two of them. This is the number 2.

A trick to tricking yourself into checking what you've written is to read out loud, starting with the last sentence, then work your way backwards through your piece. This dupes your eye into seeing, truly seeing what you've written instead of what your eye expects to see. Keep in mind, when it comes to spell checks, they will not catch the words spelled correctly but used wrongly.

Happy blogging!