The bets keep coming in that I won’t finish this article writing A-Z series. Wanna take me up on my offer? Just send an email to…oh, never mind. Anyway, in this installment, I’m up to the letter L which stands for language. Language can mean many things. In the world of article writing, the same holds true. So I’m going to touch on a couple of language points. One subtle and one not so subtle.

Let’s kick it off with the not so subtle one first. Have you ever gone to a comedy club? I have. Some of the acts are very refined and suitable for the whole family and then you have those where the language is coarse, to say the least. I certainly wouldn’t have let my daughter hear these acts until she was of age. Well, with article writing, you have to know your audience when it comes to using language that you wouldn’t hear a truck driver spit out of his mouth.

Why? Well, the obvious reason is that, unless you’re writing articles for a certain crowd that expects coarse language, you don’t know who is going to read your article. The last thing you want to do is offend your readers on this level. Trust me, there will be plenty of other levels where you’re going to offend them, such as with your opinion, so you don’t want to do it on this one. Keep the bad language for the after hours bar you’re planning on hitting after you’re done writing.

That’s the one kind of language…the not so subtle one. But there is another kind of language that can be quite subtle for many…especially if you’re not looking for it.

The language I’m talking about is the way you communicate with your reader. The best way to explain this is with an example. There are many ways to try to make a person understand that if they want to succeed in this world, they need to get a good education. Naturally, this would pertain to an article you were writing about education. Let’s assume we’re writing this article and targeting high school kids. If you’re targeting kids in a rural school, upper middle class, you might say something like this.

“I can’t stress the importance of a good education. The opportunities that will open to you, whether they be in medicine, science or even the arts, will be greater than if you were to cut your education short…”

And so on.

But, let’s say you’re writing for kids who attend an inner city school where the dropout rate is very high and drugs and guns run their world. You might want to say something like this.

“Hey, you want to end up on the street with a bullet through your head and nobody caring that you’ve just breathed your last breath? Go drop out of school. You’re probably as good as dead the moment you do…”

And so on.

Granted the above paragraph is rather blunt and I’m not saying I’d actually write that, but do you see the difference that language makes in the way something comes across? How you say something is going to greatly affect how the reader reacts to your article. The language you use is therefore critical to getting your point across in the way you want to get it across.

Anyway, I just thought I’d give you these couple of things to think about for the next time you write an article about…well, whatever.

It’s not so much what you say but how you say it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write articles that get people’s attention and can earn you up to $200 per article written? Then check out my Complete Article Writing And Marketing Guide that you can find at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book that I wrote from over 30 years of writing experience.