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Texas ISD School Guide
Texas ISD School Guide







Writing and Public Speaking

Article Writing Tips - The Tone of Your Article
By:Steven Wagenheim

There are tons of tips flying around on how to write articles. But the one thing that I rarely find touched on is the tone of the article itself. Do you think about the tone of your article when you write one? If not, you should. How you word things will greatly affect the response that you get from your reader. So, no offense to the X's and O's guys out there, this one thing could make or break the article you've written...no matter how well constructed it is.

Probably the best way to explain why tone is so important is with examples. Let's say you're writing an article that is a review of a brand new comedy. The purpose of the article could be anything from trying to get the reader to buy movie tickets from you personally to picking up another title with the lead actor. It doesn't matter. What DOES matter is how you write the article itself.

The movie is a comedy. So, is the article going to have a serious tone? No, of course not. You might even want to throw in a few jokes yourself or even take a few digs at the movie if you thought it was a piece of garbage. You want the article to be as entertaining as the movie itself...more so if the movie was a dog. The reader is reading about entertainment so he or she wants to be entertained. That's YOUR job as the writer of the article. Don't blow it.

But...what if the article you're writing is about war crimes? This is nothing to laugh at. In fact this is a very serious subject and has to be treated with compassion and empathy. An article like this will probably be very solemn, depending on the slant that you take. You might want to write the article from a sense of outrage. That's fine too. An emotional article on war crimes will definitely get the reader's attention. Point is, this is a completely different article than the one you wrote about the comedy and therefore must have a completely different tone or not only won't the article work...it might offend people in the process.

Finding the write tone for your article is an art and something that you'll learn over time. There are no books that teach you how to phrase something depending on what it is you're writing about. This usually comes down to just plain old common sense...something many people lack.

So before you start writing...think. Is the tone you're using appropriate for the article you're writing?

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.






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