Kevin Turner on Feature Writing
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Keep your sentences short. If your sentence
reads along these lines without enough punctuation
or grammar to make it clear what the reader is
supposed to be focussing on and contains clauses
relating to different topics which might confuse; and
even you aren’t really sure which is the most
important part - and still it goes on and on way
beyond the point that the reader can recall the start
of it, consider splitting it into two or three
sentences.
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Read your words back out loud; if you can’t
reach the end of the sentence without struggling for
breath, employ a little more punctuation.
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If you are struggling to incorporate something
a bit dry and factual into your article, for example a
checklist or an inventory, don’t be afraid to use text
boxes. Refer to the text box in the body text, ie see
box, titled whatever, and ensure this is clearly
highlighted so the layout guy can place the box in
the right position on the page.
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As regards submitting your article, make sure
you’ve agreed the word count with the editor
beforehand and try and stick to it; don’t go below or
above the word count by more than 150 words if
you can help it. Make sure you have some high
quality images available to illustrate your article and
if you, add some captions (again, be concise).
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And last but not least, practice. If you enjoy
writing you’ll be doing a lot of it out of choice and
like most things, you’ll improve with time and
experience. MEM