Formatting - A Publisher's Point of View (c) 2004, Jude Wright
Do you format and spell check your ads and articles?
Speaking from an advertiser's point of view, if you don't, your
ads and articles may not get published. And not just by me. I
know a lot of publishers who just "delete" those unformatted ads
and those articles with tons of misspelled words.
Speaking strictly from a newsletter publisher's point of view,
please do!
I love to get articles from my subscribers. However, when I get
an article that is not formatted at all I tend to just click
delete. Why? Well, if there is nothing to tell me where a
paragraph is supposed to end, I have to guess where the author
wanted a new paragraph to start. With some articles that can be
a chore because of the way they are written. Of course, if the
article is a good article (and yes, I do read all articles), i
will put paragraph endings, where I believe they make the most
sense. In some cases I will try to contact the author.
As to the numerous ads that are submitted to me, they should be
formatted too - 60 characters per line is my line length of
choice. And don't forget the ALL CAPS dilemma! You might think
this makes your ad stand out, but the truth is - it also keeps
the entire newsletter from being delivered. The sp'am filters
just love to eat those all caps emails! So my job is to go
through all the ads and change the all caps to "sentence" or
"title" caps. Please remember this when submitting your ads To
publishers. It makes it so much easier to put a newsletter
together when rules are followed. There is a reason for the
rules after all!
Are you wondering about all the "/" and "'" marks in the ezines
you receive? Those are separating trigger words to "hide" them
from the sp'am blockers. Just one more job for the ezine
publisher!
What about spelling and grammar? Well, I'm not as worried about
grammar as I am about spelling. Having been an Office Manager
for over 20 years, those spelling mistakes are just plain
irritating. I do take into account the fact that the author/ad
writer may not use English as his/her first language. But
sometimes people get in a hurry and just "don't bother" with the
spelling.
Another irritant? Long URL addresses. Some of those babies are
really long! So, when I have gone through and formatted the
length of the lines of my ezine, there's one that always goes
way out past that line length. I think it looks unprofessional.
Use one of the many text formatting utilities out there. Two of
them are: http://tinyurl.Com and http://snipurl.Com. I suppose i
could "snip" them myself, but with all the ads I get, that could
take a long time too! There's also the probability that someone
will "steal" your commission by entering his own affiliate ID.
So, please take a few minutes to format your ads and spell check
your articles. It's to your benefit as well as to the benefit of
the newsletter publisher. You are writing the article to be read
- and published...Right?
About Author :
----------------------------------------------------- Jude
Wright has been an Internet Marketer for three years. She has
just created a product that will help other Internet Marketers
keep all their marketing information in one database. Check it
out at: http://i-marketingorganizer.com/organizer.htm