Your own critic: how to check posts before publishing on a blog and why to do it

1. Make sure the text or video is useful

Look at your post, whether it's a text post or a video, through the eyes of a subscriber. Think about whether it matches the title and covers the topic enough.

If you understand that after reading or viewing questions may remain, add answers to them. But do not get carried away: explain the controversial points briefly so that the post does not turn into a huge long read or a three-hour movie.

2. Get rid of difficult words and sentences

The bureaucracy and piling up of constructions make the text difficult to read. This is especially important in video scripting. Break the sentences into simple ones, rephrase the participial and participle phrases - so the audience will definitely not have to listen to what was said several times.

Also, check if the text contains highly specialized terms and other words that will be incomprehensible to most subscribers. Choose simple synonyms for them or briefly explain what they mean. Otherwise, readers will be distracted and go to search engines for clues, and they won’t get to the end of the post.

3. Find out if there are any errors

Before posting, make sure that there are no extra commas, words used in the wrong meaning, redundant and repetitive expressions in the text. If we are talking about a video, pay attention to the correct placement of stresses.

Even experienced authors sometimes fail to notice all the inaccuracies. Classic text editors also do not always highlight controversial fragments. To search for spelling, grammatical and stylistic errors, you can use special services, for example "LanguageTool», «Advego" or "Text guide».

4. Conduct fact-checking

This is especially important for expert blogs. Errors related to inaccurate information can damage the author's reputation. Before publishing, be sure to confirm the data you provide. And not somewhere on the forums, but in respected publications, scientific journals or books. Well, if you can collect several authoritative sources at once.

Assess whether the material you link to is relevant now. Perhaps the author of the publication is a doctor of science with an endless list of regalia, but his work was published half a century ago, and since then this opinion has been refuted.

5. Don't rush to post

Set the text aside and give yourself at least a couple of hours of rest - or more if time permits. In the process of writing and editing, the eye can “blur” - there is a risk of not noticing even elementary mistakes. Therefore, it is better to take a break and then look at the post or video script again with a fresh look.

This technique will bring the publication to the ideal. Rereading the text several times, you can find both logical inconsistencies and unsuccessful formulations.