SteemUp #3 : Oh Quality, Where Art Thou?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #steem2 years ago

Yes, I'm joining in the chorus. We need more quality in the posts on Steem.

There are two parts to this topic - what the posts are about, and how the posts are presented.

For this post I am just looking at the second of these - quality of presentation.

That is a broad enough area in itself covering titles, punctuation, grammar, spelling, images etc.

The goal is simple. Make your posts look good and read well.



Five Tips for Better Posts

1. Titles

Keep them short and informative. Cut out the unnecessary information that is already in tags.

You don't need to include your club status, nor your burn status - they belong in your tags.

Most of all do not include your account name in the title - we know who wrote the post.

And check the spelling. The title forms the url (web address) of the post. If you get it wrong it is there forever.

So if you are writing about your daily life, don't mention the cows...

[Heads Up - that's a farming joke - I'm just milking it for a few laughs 🤠]


2. Introduction

Keep it short, keep it sweet.

You do not need to thank everyone under the sun for supporting you. You do not need to recap how you arrived on Steem. You do not need tell the world how important Steem is in your life.

You just need to introduce what the post is going to be about, and maybe highlight the key points of the post.

Five or six simple sentences should be quite enough for an introduction.


3. Punctuation, Spelling and Grammar

These could all be individual points, but I have lumped them together as they all come under the heading of basic writing skills.

Not everyone will be fluent and well versed writers. That is a skill like singing, or cooking, or carpentry.

But it is a skill that can be improved with practice and diligence.

If you are writing in English it can also be improved with Grammarly. I have not used it myself but I believe it does a good job and the basic version is free...

[ I would be interested to hear from people who use Grammarly. And for non English writers are there similar packages for other languages? ]

If you can't use Grammarly, I am sure there must be spellcheckers for most languages - please use one if you are not good at spelling. This is particularly important for Google Translate - if you misspell a word in your own language Google will have no chance of translating it correctly for readers of other languages.

And please remember sentences always begin capital letters, and I is always a capital letter...


4. Photographs

Be selective with your photos. Just because you took 17 pics of your nephew on a bouncy castle does not mean you have to include all 17 in your Steem post.

Choose your best photos to illustrate individual points in the post.

Make sure the photos are in focus and the composition and lighting are good. And crop and resize if needed. Try to make all the photos in your post of the same size. If need be have two different sizes for the photos.

For most posts up to five photos is likely to be enough. Although if you are doing a step by step tutorial for example more photos may be justified.

Don't use composites or collages of images - each individual image becomes too small to see anything useful.

For every image include a descriptive and informative caption. 'Dog' doesn't cut the mustard. 'My Neighbour's Doberman, Rex, Playing with my Pet Rabbit' works better.

Ideally use your own photos, if not use ones from copyright free sources such as Pixabay or Unsplash.


5. Cut The Crap

Don't include unnecessary and superfluous 'stuff' that adds nothing to the value of the post.

As mentioned in #2 keep your introductions tight, and your conclusions brief.

Again you don't need to thank every curator and every Admin and Mod of your community in your closing paragraph.

AND DO NOT TAG PEOPLE JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT. This will unlikely get you more votes, and most likely get you less as the people who are repeatedly tagged might just get annoyed.

It's personal choice but I do not like all the animated gifs and other graphics that many people carry at the bottom of their posts. Do they add any value or do they just add to the mouse scrolling time...

When you have finished your post, read it again. Is every word necessary? Cut out those that aren't.

Then when you have finished those checks and corrections, read the post one more time - just for luck 😀



Thank you to the many people who have written similar posts recently. (I will resist the tagging, but you know who you are 😉)

I don't like to be repetitive, but the message still isn't getting through to large chunks of the Steem population.

Take care with your posts. Take time with your posts. Check and re-check.

Make posts that read well and look good.

Pennsif



[ graphics by @pennsif ]

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Muchas gracias por el recordatorio, aveces los autores no tomamos en cuenta que "menos es más " cuando la situación lo amerita, necesitamos cosas que realmente agreguen valor en Steem. ¡Gracias amigo!

Creo que agregaría un punto más:

  • Escribe no por escribir, escribe algo bueno porque alguien seguro te leerá.

Y seguido de eso "¿como impactará lo que estoy escribiendo a mis lectores? ¿Querrán volver a leer una de mis publicaciones?"

Pero supongo que es avanzar a un nivel mayor; comprender que es tu deber dirigirte a un público y mantenerlo firme.

Expreso eso porque al leer algunos diarios, me encuentro con el tipo de personas que "escribe por escribir" y resulta complicado sacar algo bueno de sus publicaciones para hacer un buen comentario 🤫😅

me encuentro con el tipo de personas que "escribe por escribir" y resulta complicado sacar algo bueno de sus publicaciones para hacer un buen comentario

Te diré que todos los días leo muchas publicaciones y nunca me gusta considerar que alguien "escribe por escribir", en toda publicación que al menos tenga un cuerpo y 300 palabras siempre se puede encontrar un mensaje y una historia. Nosotros como lectores debemos tener la sensibilidad para ver esto y no despreciar un mensaje que este dando una persona.

No todo el que escribe tal vez sepa expresarse de la manera más eficaz y acertada, pero el solo hecho de escribir coherentemente ya es un merito. Hacer un buen comentario va a depender más que todo de nuestros propios intereses, lo que nos llama la atención, y no tanto de lo que encontramos, en todo se puede encontrar algo, aunque sea para decirle a esa persona como mejorar su post.

Sé que dices las cosas con la mejor intención, y este mensaje es para ti con la mejor intención también.

Tienes razón querida, tomaré en cuenta tus sinceras palabras, estoy puliendo mi lado "comentarista" y supongo que me dejé llevar al intentar reflejar mis propias experiencias "comentando y publicando".

(Aunque por mi temperamento me expreso de esa manera en persona pero siempre intento refrenar palabras o expresiones que no son correctas.)

Me llevaré este consejo a mi corazón. Yo he llegado a ser de las que "escribe por escribir" y solo por esa acción han salido palabras en mis diarios de que las que luego me arrepiento. Pero ya es demasiado tarde, alguien más se ha dado el tiempo de leerlas

Gracias @inspiracion

La sinceridad es el lado que puede hacer que conectemos unos con otros, solo así podemos comprendernos de verdad.

Escribir en los diarios o mejor dicho, en internet, puede ser complicado por esa parte que mencionas ¿qué pasa si me arrepiento?, pues no queda de otra que asumirlo, creo que escribir es algo que entregamos de nosotros, lo que dejamos por escrito ya no nos pertenece pues el otro lo interpretará como quiera o pueda.

Lo único que puede salvarnos es hacer las cosas de corazón, así no nos sentiremos mal por lo expresado (en algún momento), ya que son decisiones que uno toma, pues también me ha pasado, somos humanos, lo que hacemos esta sujeto a fallas, y solo queda hacerlo lo mejor posible.

Gracias por tu feedback querida.

Gracias a ti querida por tu comentario, bendiciones y pues a seguir haciendolo lo mejor posible!

Hello friend, I really liked reading this publication, it may sound exaggerated, but everything that is about how to learn to write, I love it.

I don't like excess either, in writing almost always less is more, even for poetry, because it teaches us to be concise and that our messages have weight.

I don't like banners or gifs either, I think that after seeing them three times, you stop noticing them and they are like a TV commercial.

And you are right, this topic is not exhausted, because every time we can learn again to be more concise and meaningful in our written language.

Thanks for sharing 😊

Hello bro,

Always glad to read you, very nice suggestions, I’ll surely try to improve my templates. Specially my The diary games ones which includes a lot of things at this point.

I have a recommendation for you, probably you don’t tend to do it but justifying your texts always could help to improve yourself too

Check this

CFEE4FC9-F0FD-4BB5-9608-5265F753D80B.jpeg

Compare with this:

E9A56986-4A01-43F7-B18C-19093FAD3EC9.jpeg

I think justifying is nothing too complicate, you can simply apply a div class text-justify to the whole post and inside it add the other markdowns and that will works for all texts that doesn’t have other div.

We can always improve ourselves, all suggestions are always appreciated too, thanks and Steem On!

Quality? Yea, very important and all the tips mentioned are all worth it. Spelling and grammar is of paramount. It's good to read and reread our writings before posting.

Thanks for this wonderful tips. I have resteemed your post for wider audience

Your quality content qualifies the TEAM 5 guidelines.
Post InformationStatus
Steemexclusive✅️
Plagiarism free✅️
Verified User✅️
Bot free✅️
Club Status5050, 75, 100

Your post is upvoted using the @steemcurator08 account by @pelon53. Continue making quality content for more support.

thank you for sharing tips that are very useful for us in writing quality posts, hopefully my posts on this platform will be of higher quality

@pennsif thank you very much sir. Submitting informative content to us to maintain or improve post quality. I understand the mistakes in my post through your writing. Hope I can make good quality posts in future.

This guide is very useful for Steem Entrepreneurs Community page users, thank

Excelente este post, creo que debemos hacer un esfuerzo importante en mejorar la calidad de las publicaciones. Es una tarea que debemos comenzar a hacer en cada camunidad, gracias por compartir esta publicación tan interesante.

Saludos

What you say is true, but everything needs a process so that they can provide interesting articles for steemians to visit. To get good articles they have to study Or often read from other people's articles for them to learn more.

And it depends on them willing to learn to improve, write the best articles and provide innovation and education for their growth in the future.

Thank you for sharing your useful post, both for me and for those who have read this post.🍻

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