Thursday, February 24, 2011

Professional Writing Tips for Crafters

If you're a crafter, you're going to be writing a blog post, forum post, craft pattern, craft class, informative article, or other craft document at some point in your career. Perhaps you have already begun. If so, you may still find these tips to be helpful.

You must routinely apply these critical details if you want your writing to look professional. Follow these tips when emailing as well in order to maintain the respect of your email recipients - especially customers. It is absolutely crucial that your audience acquires a sense of professionalism when they read anything that you write so that you can have a competitive edge in a saturated craft market.
  • It goes without saying that you should have enough knowledge about, or experience with, your topic before you begin to write about it.
  • Always use appropriate grammar and punctuation.
  • Use complete sentences when you write. 
  • Use capital letters appropriately. Using all lower case or all upper case letters not only looks unprofessional but these sentences are very difficult to read.
  • Use spellcheck devices to be sure there are no misspelled words.
  • Do NOT use text abbreviations in your professional writing.
  • If you're writing instructions, you or someone else should test these to establish that they can be easily followed. If instructions aren't tested, you can be almost certain that important information has been omitted.
  • It is also important that instructions be written so that the most novice crafter can follow them. At the very least, provide a list of terms if you insist on using craft jargon.
  • If something is difficult to explain in words, insert a clear photo to help explain.
  • Read your document out loud to hear the flow of the words.
  • Lastly, it is always a good idea to have someone else proofread your work no matter how confident you are that everything is correct.

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