TIPS ON WRITING A GOOD POST

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Hello everyone,

I would like for us to take a look at a few tips that can better your writing skills and elevate our posts. This is because, upon going through some of the diary game posts and other posts within the community, I realized several members are still struggling to produce an effective post. And sometimes there are various failed attempts regarding the use of markdowns which I always try to correct as well. In this post, we will be looking at some things you can do to produce a good post on steemit.

THE USE OF PARAGRAPHS

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When writing a post, effective communication with your audience should be of utmost priority. This is because, it would be very unfortunate for a post with great content to land on death ears. This is why authors should make sure to produce very neat work which is very readable. This is done through the use of paragraphs.

Naturally, people are easily drawn away from congested posts which are quite difficult to read than well spaced ones which can be read with relative ease. As such, use of paragraphs is a great deal and helps your readers to easily follow your article.

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HOW TO CREATE PARAGRAPHS

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Ideally, for every new topic in an article, there must be a paragraph. This is because, each paragraph consist primarily of two things;

• The main idea : This is the sentence around which all other sentences are placing emphasis.
• Supporting statements : These are all other sentences placing emphasis or adding more details to the main idea.

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With the use of paragraphs, the reader gets to grasp a full understanding of each idea you are trying to communicating with the help of the supporting statements.

A typical example of paragraph usage can be seen below.

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In the above example, the author starts by telling his audience about an animal (elephant) he saw on the highway. This immediately excites the reader to find out more about this elephant which is why he proceeds to give more details about its attributes. After he's done with that topic, he closes it and transitions smoothly towards a different topic on a fresh paragraph.

This makes reading of posts very interesting and enables writers to communicate effectively with their audience.

THE USE OF MARKDOWNS

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Markdowns are used to format our texts in order to enhance the content of our posts. Although actual content of our posts is of the greatest essence, our initial goal is to capture the attention of the reader. This is where the importance of markdowns come in. Other than that, our posts look quite boring and readers easily lose interest along the way. Here are some markdowns you can use in your articles that are very effective.

LINE SPACING

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When your texts/paragraphs feel too close to each other and might need some extra space, line spacing comes in very handy. Also, at times you may have uploaded an image but as soon as you start to type beneath it, you realize the text is simply too close to the image. You should then start on a fresh line, leaving at least an extra line beneath the text, and put about 3 or more dashes there;

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CENTER

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Sometimes, the position of certain things in your article could make it more appealing to your audience and take it to the next level. For instance, after uploading your copyright free image and properly citing your source, you can use simple markdown like the center markdown to make it stand out. To center you text/image, here is how you do it;

<center>text/image</center>

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If it is an image, the final result will look like the one below.

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source

As opposed to the one below which is not centered and appears to be situated along the left side of the page. This situation is not ideal but the centered examples shows your good skill of presentation to your readers/audience.

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source

BOLD & ITALICS

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These markdowns are very useful in situations where you would want to place emphasis on a particular word. They really allow the word or sentence to stand out, drawing the readers attention more towards them.

• To bolden a text,
  **text**
  This results in text

• To use italics on a text,
  *text*
  This results in text.

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A GOOD COVER IMAGE

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Even before your potential reader visits your post and starts reading, your cover photo (first photo) should be able to draw their attention and attract them towards your post. And should also be able to communicate on their own without further backing. There are already a good number of photos on copyright-free images site like pixabay and pexels.

However, sometimes we can't find such an image to represent what we would like to portray and that is where a flyer/poster maker comes in handy. There are various flyer apps available on both pc and phone.

Some of the good user friendly mobile flyer apps include;

• Canva
• Adobe Spark Post
• Poster Maker

These are some of the things you can add to your post to make them much more appealing to your audience and would help you to greatly improve your writing. Feel free to drop any questions/contributions you may have in the comment section as well.

Thank you for your attention.