1)Topics: We would love to hear from writers interested in contributing thoughts about bringing home the world. Take a look at our blog categories to get an idea of what we typically blog about. There are so many great topics that encompass bringing home the world. Here are a few to get you started. We welcome a variety of perspectives and will review any post that is in the spirit of our blog. 

a)Discovery & Exploration: Do you have any fun and inspiring projects/activities that you do with your children? Submit a post with step by step instructions and pictures to share with our readers. Are you a professional photographer? How about a post on taking back to school pictures at home? 

b)Global culture at home: From food to language to music, there are so many ways we all bring the world home and are globally influenced every day. Please share some of your experiences, traditions, moments, discoveries, celebrations and cultural influences here. 

c)Design and Style: Have an interesting perspective on fashion and its various cultural and historical influences? How about a post on incorporating global design into your home? Articles/posts must be unique and be original content. The post cannot have been published elsewhere previously and cannot be re-published elsewhere.

d)Photographs: Have an interesting photographs to share and span stories around it. Do guest post me. 

e)Miscellaneous: The sky is the limit. Have any interesting post? Let us know.

Topics you selected must be relevant to the Tips and Thoughts blog and in line with existing content. 

2) Formatting rules and policies:

Posts should be concise and succinct with at least two short paragraphs of text. Posts should not be too text heavy. 

3) Image requirements :

Images – Every post must begin with an image/has an image. (If possible, it should be approximately 590px wide, but that width should not be achieved at the expense of image clarity). 

Please include relevant images in each post. 

a) In list posts, which include multiple images, all images should be the same size.

b) All images must be either licensed by the guest blogger or attributed to the site from which they are retrieved. If the pictures are the blogger’s own, then they may credit themselves in the captions 

4) Post submission process: 

a)Post formatting requirements – all posts should be submitted via email (guestpost@tipsnthoughts.com) with images attached. 

b)Re-publishing requirements – submitted posts may not be posted elsewhere (i.e. no reduplication). 

The post belongs to you, the author, but we request that it not be republished anywhere else. 

5) Editing policies: – articles may be edited for grammar, links, etc. However, no major changes will be made to the post without the your approval. 

a)Posts should be easy to read, conversational in tone, free of grammar and spelling errors and no longer than 600 words. The most important thing we look for when judging the writing quality is ease of reading as well as an ability to get to the point quickly. We believe that simple is better. We do ask that you retain some level of formality. That is, please do not rely upon smiley faces, etc. 

b)Longer posts should be broken down into small paragraphs. The formatting should allow for a reader to quickly scan the text and understand the post with relative ease. 

Please note: By emailing us with your article and bio, you are agreeing to our terms of privacy policy. We will review our submissions and plan to share a wide range of interesting articles. Please recognize that we get numerous submissions on a daily basis, which makes it difficult for us to respond to everyone individually. We will respond only to the submissions that we wish to feature. Thank you for taking the time to submit your post and thank you for sharing. 

You may not be a professional writer. Yet no matter what type of profession you are in, chances are you will need to write something on a professional level at one time or another.

#1 Know Your Audience

For any type of writing, from resumes to posts, the first thing you need to do is identify your audience; the people who will read your work. The audience for a sales letter from your company or client is much different from the audience for a blog post like this or a children’s story. The audience you’re writing for will determine the tone, style, and even the subject matter of your material.

Before you start to write, make a few notes about your intended audience. This will help you make sure that what you write will appeal to this audience and will fit their needs and wants. If you’re writing for children, for example, knowing the age range for the children you’re writing for will help you make sure your story or nonfiction piece is age-appropriate for your readers.

 #2 Know Your Purpose for Writing

Besides knowing the audience you are writing for, you should also identify your purpose for writing for this audience. If you identify your purpose upfront, you’ll be able to keep your writing tightly focused on that purpose. You’ll also be able to guide your readers to taking any action you might want them to take. 

Make a few notes as to the purpose of whatever it is you’re going to write. You’ll be more likely to fulfill this purpose if you take time to become very aware of it before you start writing. 

#3 Plan Before You Write

Planning is actually a separate step in the writing process. Yet many people try to do the planning and the writing all in one step. Then they tend to get frustrated because the writing takes too long or is too difficult to do. If you plan what you will write before you sit down to actually write it, the writing will be much faster and easier. Plus, your overall writing will be much better. Planning what you need to write can be an enjoyable step in the writing process.

#4 Decide on Structure

As you’re planning your post, decide on the best structure for it. That is, create a way to best organize the information you will be writing about. If you create a structure for your project as you’re planning your writing, this structure will provide you with a blueprint for your project. With the blueprint in place, all you’ll need to do to complete the project when you sit down to write is follow the blueprint.

A good article usually starts with a catchy title, followed by a “hook” sentence (called the lead), which is part of an introductory paragraph that pulls in the reader. This paragraph is followed by the body of the article, which covers the main points of the piece, and the article ends with a concluding paragraph.

If you’re unsure as to how you should structure the content you need to write, study something similar. Make note of how it was structured. The same structure might work well for your content. Many writers find that once they have decided how they will structure or organize their article, story, report, etc., the material seems to write itself.

#5 Write Simply

For the most part, the best writing is easy to read and easy to understand. Try to write simply. Avoid obscure vocabulary in most of your writing. Make sure your article can be best understood by a tenth grade student. Only use technical jargon when you have first identified your audience, so you know they will understand it without extensive explanations. Vary your sentence length. Use many short sentences with a few longer sentences mixed in each paragraph. Be sure your sentences “pull” the reader through the text in a logical order.

#6 Use Online Resources to Get Started

The Internet is full of great resources. If you can’t seem to get started on a particular writing project, go online to locate a few samples to use as templates or patterns for your own writing. For example, if you need to write a resume, go to www.google.com and type in “resume templates” in the search engine window. Sites with a variety of resume templates will pop up. If you need to write a business letter but you aren’t quite sure how to organize it, then google “how to write a business letter” and you’ll find many articles that will include samples of business letters. Samples and templates are used by professional writers all the time, although they may change the templates somewhat to suit their needs. Eventually, you’ll be able to do that, too.

#7 Use Active Voice

Active voice tends to make the writing more engaging and immediate for the reader. To give your material an active voice, stick to basic simple sentence structure for the most part. Start your sentences with a noun or pronoun, followed by a verb and then the object of that verb.

Like this:

Also use simple verb forms. Instead of writing, “he would sweep the porch every morning,” write, “he swept the porch every morning.”
Avoid beginning too many sentences with a participle phrase (generally a verb that ends in -ing). Here’s an example of a sentence starting with a participle phrase:
Crossing the street and walking toward the park, Mary hurried to her job. 

It isn’t incorrect to begin a sentence with a participle phrase. It just slows down the reader (making your material less active) if too many sentences on a page begin this way.

Tip #8 Use Precise Verbs

Precise verbs help readers create clearer mental images of the information you are trying to convey. For example, “he stomped over to the coffeepot” is much clearer and less clunky than saying, “he angrily walked over to the coffeepot.”

Here are some simple verbs, along with more precise counterparts:

 Verb                                           Precise Verb

  Ran                            Raced, streaked, charged

 Talked                         Chatted, discussed, debated

  Sat                             Plopped, Flopped, plunked

#9 Use Precise Nouns

It may take a bit longer to come up with a noun that tells your reader precisely what you are describing. But just like precise verbs, precise nouns make your writing stronger and they enable the reader to get a clearer, more accurate mental image of what you’re trying to convey. For example, a brown ball could mean any number of things, but a meatball gives a very specific image to the reader.

#10 Watch for Words You Tend to Overuse

Most writers have a few key phrases or words they tend to overuse. When you’ve finished writing a chapter of a novel, or a nonfiction article, etc., go back over your work, looking for the specific words you tend to overuse. Consult a thesaurus and change some of these words to other words that have the same meaning.

#11 Write Tight

Writing tight means making every word count. To write tight, eliminate any unnecessary words. Why say, “he nodded his head”, for example, when all you need to say is, “he nodded”, (because what else would he nod but his head?).

 Wordy                                                                          Tight

shrugged his shoulders                                  shrugged

said softly                                                         whispered

#12 Proof Your Work

Before you send your work out to your intended readers, proof it one last time. Check for spelling mistakes, punctuation and grammatical errors, and general typos.