Discover seven types of writers that contribute to the explosion of content that is available online. How can blogs benefit?
Not All Who Write Are Writers
A writer is someone who talks to himself—while speaking to others. You might view it as obsessive behavior. An idea or sentence gets stuck in your head. Then you begin a dialogue until you fear the conversation will be lost. So you run to the keyboard or grab a notepad and begin jotting down your thoughts. You may have more important things to do, but in that moment, writing takes precedence.
An honest assessment reveals that everyone with education and experience is not good at writing. Different types of writers review or provide content for articles on this site. Perhaps you desire to submit a post here or elsewhere. Before doing so, identify your style of writing from the seven summaries below.
1. Technical Writers
Some people specialize in writing product manuals. Explaining how things are wired, how to use software, or how to assemble furniture requires considerable technical comprehension. Adjectives are limited to size and color distinctions with few, if any adverbs. Making it easy for the average consumer to follow is a valuable skill.
2. Scientific Writers
Written at grade 16+ level, peer-reviewed medical journals and scientific posters are written in a manner that confounds the average person. Devoid of adjectives like fantastic or awesome, favorable distinctions are most often described as significantly different.
Hypo- and hyper-prefixes are preferred to identify small and large. Anterior and posterior describe the front and rear. Also, look the the occasional in vivo and in vitro. An abstract summarizes the content. Research parameters include the number of subjects and the study methodology. Data and discussion follow. Clear conclusions reveal findings. At the end are supporting references from peer-reviewed journals.
3. Legal Writers
Omissions in contract law can be expensive. Attorney victories thrive on loopholes. Contract templates are available online for many purposes. If the risk is greater than the reward, consider hiring a legal professional who can pack the document with the necessary legal jargon.
4. Journalists
Journalists write for newspapers, magazines, or broadcasts. Breaking fresh stories may require a fair amount of interviews and fact-checking. Often, the news is time-sensitive. The journalistic writing style uses attention-grabbing headlines and summarization of facts upfront.
They then fill the body of the article with progressively irrelevant facts. This method allows editors to cut paragraphs from the bottom to fit a layout or fit the news hour without rewriting—a less critical step online. Opinion pieces can be evocative and engaging.
5. Copywriters
Advertising agencies thrive off of the work of good designers and copywriters. These writers come up with clever headlines and text that make you feel like you are missing out on something pleasurable or necessary. Whether it’s an automobile, a bucket of chicken, or a mobile phone, after reading or hearing an ad, you feel you can’t live without that product.
6. Book Authors
Though an author is a writer, not all writers are authors. Usually, the distinction of author is reserved for people who write hardcopy or digital books. It can be a short children’s book, a comprehensive recipe book, poetry, fictional mystery, or a long novel.
Either way, many people feel that the ISBN bar code on the back makes it official. I am going to lump creative writers into this category. Novelists progressively develop both plot and characters over several chapters to draw readers into a suspenseful story.
Ending the debate of whether there’s a difference between writers and authors, I reply, “Authors author. Writers write. Either can cross the line.”
7. Bloggers
Bloggers are a mashup of other types of writers. The subject of the blog and the audience determines the vocabulary and writing style. A blog about technology or programming is going to have a degree of geekiness. Health blogs can either be written for patients or doctors, with correspondingly different language.
A blogger must adopt elements of a copywriter. To increase readership, bloggers also include search engine optimization (SEO). This can involve being redundant, as keywords are repeated 3+ times. Your post might also include a list of long-tail keywords. To appeal to more people, text is written with 9th grade or higher comprehension level.
What we gather from this is that being a writer doesn’t necessarily make you an effective blogger. A novelist might write stories that are too long. A scientific writer may have too many details and not include SEO within articles. Conversely, a blogger might not have the vocabulary to write scientific papers. Yet, all styles of writing are contributing to global online content.
Be honest about your abilities. One individual might be good at building a logical outline. Someone else can pull relevant research. Another person can phrase content in a manner that is easy to read. If you are trying to do all and lacking any, it will be apparent to readers.
Collaborations allow everyone to benefit from the inherent strengths of each type of writer. Appealing to a wide variety of readers, ClinicalPosters is happy to provide a mixture of scientifically reviewed health articles and other topics within multiple blogs.
