Do you format and spell check your ads and articles?

Speaking from an advertiser's point of view, if you don't, your ads and articles may not get published. And not just by me. I know a lot of publishers who just "delete" those unformatted ads and those articles with tons of misspelled words.

Speaking strictly from a newsletter publisher's point of view, please do!

I love to get articles from my subscribers. However, when I get an article that is not formatted at all I tend to just click delete. Why? Well, if there is nothing to tell me where a paragraph is supposed to end, I have to guess where the author wanted a new paragraph to start. With some articles that can be a chore because of the way they are written. Of course, if the article is a good article (and yes, I do read all articles), I will put paragraph endings, where I believe they make the most sense. In some cases I will try to contact the author.

As to the numerous ads that are submitted to me, they should be formatted too - 60 characters per line is my line length of choice. And don't forget the ALL CAPS dilemma! You might think this makes your ad stand out, but the truth is - it also keeps the entire newsletter from being delivered. The sp'am filters just love to eat those all caps emails! So my job is to go through all the ads and change the all caps to "sentence" or "title" caps. Please remember this when submitting your ads To publishers. It makes it so much easier to put a newsletter together when rules are followed. There is a reason for the rules after all!

Are you wondering about all the "/" and "'" marks in the ezines you receive? Those are separating trigger words to "hide" them from the sp'am blockers. Just one more job for the ezine publisher!

What about spelling and grammar? Well, I'm not as worried about grammar as I am about spelling. Having been an Office Manager for over 20 years, those spelling mistakes are just plain irritating. I do take into account the fact that the author/ad writer may not use English as his/her first language. But sometimes people get in a hurry and just "don't bother" with the spelling.

Another irritant? Long URL addresses. Some of those babies are really long! So, when I have gone through and formatted the length of the lines of my ezine, there's one that always goes way out past that line length. I think it looks unprofessional. Use one of the many text formatting utilities out there. Two of them are: http://tinyurl.Com and http://snipurl.Com. I suppose I could "snip" them myself, but with all the ads I get, that could take a long time too! There's also the probability that someone will "steal" your commission by entering his own affiliate ID.

So, please take a few minutes to format your ads and spell check your articles. It's to your benefit as well as to the benefit of the newsletter publisher. You are writing the article to be read - and published...Right?

Formatting - A Publisher's Point of View (c) 2004, Jude Wright

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