Strong writers use an outline when they construct and write an article. The outline helps keep them focused on the task at hand. Write down the outline on a piece of paper or a second open page. The summary will assist you carry out research, take notes, put in writing a draft, edit and check for grammar and/or spelling errors and finish your article.
When preparing an article, all excellent writers have an outline that guides them. Use this 5-point outline to help you write down your next article:
1. Do a research on the topic.
2. Prepare content remarks.
3. Write the first outline
4. Change and revise your rough copy
5. Submit your completed copy
How to Conduct your Topic Research?
Select your topic. Place it into a search engine. Read the first 5-links that pertain to your topic. While reading take notes either on your computer or written on a pad of paper. Pull out quotes and write down important pieces of information and secondary ideas, too. At all times write your resource using American Press or Canadian Press standards (easily found on the internet).
Case in point: You might find the “Top 5 MP3 Players” and carry out a research on those.
Prepare your Content Notes
Do your research in under 60-minutes this will keep you from engaging in too much information for your article. Sift through your information gathered pulling out the most important ideas that you want to write about. In our case Top 5 MP3 Players you could write down about the technology, memory space, description and/or body construction.
Write your First Draft
Begin writing two or three main sentences to introduce your topic. Then write a summary of points you will make within the main body of the article. This will be your introduction. Next split up those summary points and make them into bold segments. These will be your secondary headers. Now you are ready to write your article. Beneath each secondary header you will write two to five sentences about your secondary headers title. In our example a secondary header could be “MP3 Body Construction Materials”. As soon as you have structured these sentences, wrap up your article with additional two or three sentences this will close your key subjects together with your article.
Edit and Revise your draft
Read through your text. Edit any sentences that sound out of place. Add relevant quotes if you left them out. Look for grammatical and/or spelling errors. Correct sentence structures. Check for any omitted words. Make use of a thesaurus to expand your vocabulary.
Turn in your Completed Copy
Read your article through a second time to double check for any missed grammatical and/or spelling mistakes. Save your completed copy. Now you are all set to publish your article onto a blog, give it to a publisher or hand it over to your teacher.