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Tips: How to start writing an article

TRANSLATION NOTES: Please read some comments at the end of this post

clip_image001Everyone wants to write about something, the issue is quite clear like to whom it is addressed and what they hope to achieve with the subject is also clear. But they are whipped by this phobia:

How do I start? How do I order what I mean?

Here are four major exercises of what must be done before you begin typing anyway (*), the order doesn’t matter, but each is valuable and necessary.

Doing a manuscript is more practical, although over time it can also be done in the word processor almost automatically.

1. Make a mental inventory

This is nothing more than to list what we know about the subject. For example, if the topic is “The mouse is not working well“, you would highlight things like:

  • There are ball and optical mice.
  • Ball mice are filled with grease and dust.
  • Optical mice have problems with red or shiny surfaces.
  • Rubber bands under the mouse and used to collect dust from going inside.
  • Mice are disposable.

The ideal is to have contained loose about the main topics that cover the subject matter; look for whether are accessible easy quotations or exist funny aspects and if they’re applicable. As an example:

If you are Spaniard and travel to America to teach computer classes, never use this phrase: “Catch the mouse with force”(**)

2. Ask questions to yourself

It is also useful to make questions, usually for structuring the content:

  • What reasons cause a mouse mess?
  • What advice can be taken to prevent soil in a mouse?
  • Do I include analogs mice only?
  • When does a mouse must be sent to trash?
  • How can it be cleaned a mouse?
  • What do my readers want to know about this?
  • Is it better a wool mouse-pad rather than a plastic one?

3. Relate the ideas

Then, it should be given connection to the ideas; so as to go structuring the issue. For example:

  • If it’s an optical mouse, are less messy, lasts longer, and is more expensive.
  • If it’s a ball mouse, it gets dirtier, occupies flat surface.
  • To clean the grease and dust can be done with the nail or with a small knife.
  • We need to clean the ball, the sticks that spin vertically and horizontally, the diagonally caster, the rubber bands outdoors, shake it, blow it.

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4. Further investigate.

When we’re scratching the sketch, appears the need for more research on issues that require deep. It’s not necessarily to search if someone raised the issue before because it can spread or discourage us. Finally we could be disappointed and not write, because almost everything has been said, but our point of view can never be the same, we should find another author with the same subject and we can expand the content and cite him as a reference.

Investigate goes beyond finding which has already been said, is to learn what we don’t know with certainty, for example:

  • What does wikipedia says about the mouse pad, how to write it in Spanish. Who invented it?
  • When writing of the wheels, perhaps arises curious how they are called, how it works inside the mechanism.
  • Reasons why the red color affect the optical mouse, how is it called the beam, if it affects vision or not.
  • We will also need a few images, so we have to search in Google and it will take us to learn more.

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Finally, we should have clear ideas of how to start writing the body of the document, whether it is an essay, an editorial or a simple post of 700 words. It is ideal that content can be conformed in short sections, three or four sequential points; in the case of a longer document, will give us an idea of the index with its chapters and major sections. So what comes is start writing on these points, one of them can be the conclusion, although it occupies particular criteria that will be mention later

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Rescued from my writing course, that will take me four hours during several Mondays. These are hazards of these and other jobs that are enjoyed almost as training an AutoCAD course. No matter if it’s online or from the academic stand where a group of novice writers expect in six weeks having implemented the basic principles of composition.

TRANSLATION NOTES:

(*) a la perversa: Spanish Idiom. In other countries sounds like “a la mala” which means that something will be done anyway.

(**) coger: The literal translation of the verb ‘catch’ which means ‘coger’ in Spanish is a word used in certain American countries as a reference of the Sexual Act.

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