Are you the sort of article writer who can just sit down and rattle off an article, right off the top of your head without needing help? Chances are you might have done this once or twice, but it’s not likely to be every time, be honest.
If you are like me, you like having handy resources available to help out when you need them – help getting that title perfect, tips for improving the layout or format of the article, a checklist to remind you of all the sections you need to include, idea’s for article topics, or useful statistics or quotations to include.
With that in mind, this article will list a few awesome resources an article writer will find useful.
Search Engines – having such easy almost instant access to a host of information sources and resources can be an article writer’s best friend. Be careful not to allow your searching to get you distracted though, the Internet likes to pull you in and drag you away from your intended use of it!
Copyblogger – One of my personal favorite resources for most things copy or article writing related, Copyblogger has written about most of it. Everything from ’10 Steps To Becoming A Better Writer’ to the ‘Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words’.
Brian Clark has written about it all, and you’ll learn something in every post – oh, and if you don’t know who Inigo Montoya is, you are missing out!
Article Templates – Lost for ideas on what to write about? Have an idea but not sure how to structure it on paper? Article Templates are a great resource for both problems; laying out the sections in order and including handy little tips for what to do in each section, a good article template helps you conquer writers block and many forms of procrastination.
Ezine Articles has a nice section dedicated to article templates on its blog that I recommend checking out.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary – No matter how good your vocabulary, sometimes we all need to use a dictionary to make sure we have the spelling right, or that the meaning of the word makes it the best fit for where and how we are using it. Personally I still prefer a paper edition, but paper or online is just a preference; the point is to make sure you use one or the other.
There are many free high quality dictionaries online:
Spellcheckers – Even if your authoring tool doesn’t have a spell check feature, there are plenty of cut and paste online websites offering the same basic functionality. This might seem like an obvious one, but it’s too important not to mention, people notice your errors.
Try Spellchecker.net if you need an online spell checker.
Creative Commons – depending on where you are publishing your articles, adding an image is a usually good idea – it can help the reader easily identify the subject of the article, it adds an extra element to hold their attention, and images can even be used for SEO purposes. I prefer using the Flickr Creative Commons images, there are thousands of free images you can use on many topics.
There are many more resources an article writer might make use of, these are some of the more basic and essential resources I rely on regularly.
I’ll expand on this post as i find new resources worthy of mention, this is only the beginning! If you are looking for a resource on something in particular let me know in the comments below and i’ll see about adding something to the post for you.