By Popular Request -
Parenting articles are in high demand as scores of parent, would-be parents, and guardians acting in the roles of parents search the web daily for information on childcare. Freelance writers, whether or not having personal experience of childcare, can make some part-time income by writing good parenting articles. To write well on parenting topics, a number of things need to be considered. Let’s take a brief look at what a good parenting article is and how you can write one.
What makes a parenting article good is its appeal to readers. They start with it and will only bother to read through the rest of it if it interests them. So what exactly claims the interest of most readers? Following are some qualities that make a good parenting article.
Usefulness of Information
People usually read articles to get information that can help them solve a certain problem. The information provided in a parenting article should be precise and practically useful. For example, writing an article on child’s health, the writer can list the signs and symptoms of a particular health problem found in children; the cause (or causes) of the problem; available treatment methods, their costs, and possible risks; and various means of preventing the problem in question. Detailed information on one aspect of the problem (signs and symptoms, for example) may be singled out for a single article. However, the article should not end abruptly with the last sign/symptom. It is helpful to provide a more complete source of information, preferably a free online web address for further reading.
Appropriate Range of Topic
A good parenting article tends to select a topic that is neither too broad so as to create vagueness nor too narrow as to appear irrelevant. The topic should address a problem that is in the common experience of many parents. Selecting ‘Controlling Behavioral Problems of Children’, for example, is too large a topic to be covered in a single article (or even in a dozen of them). Narrowing it down to ‘Controlling Aggression in Children’ would make a good informative piece. Squeezing it, however, to ‘Controlling Aggression in Eight Year Olds’ would reduce the number of parents who would like to read the piece. The topic of this article will only interest the parents of an eight-year old kid who shows aggressive behavior.
Appropriate Length
Keeping the article long enough to explore the essential points about the topic makes it reader-friendly. A very short article cannot say enough about the topic and fails to be appreciated. An interminably long document, on the other hand, is likely to scare the reader away in its first glance. The appropriate length of the article depends on the particular topic. Generally, it falls in the range of 500 to 1500 words.
Article Title
The first thing a reader looks at, and decides to read further, is the title of the article. Making it snazzy is an important step in attracting the reader’s interest. The title should express the scope of the article as precisely as possible. For example, the title ‘How to Care for an Ill Child’ conveys little about what kind of illness is being mentioned in the article and leaves the reader confused. He/she may not bother to give it a reading. A more catchy title may be ‘How to Give Homecare to An Epileptic Child?’
Language
The language of the article should be easy to understand, free of offensive or abusive terms, and natural. Using jargons (specialized words) that are not in common use baffles the reader and pose difficulty in understanding the meaning of the writing. Offensive language sounds uncivilized and spoils even the best kind information. Artificial language (words and expressions that are highly imaginative and novel in use) makes the writer sound more interested in playing with words than with conveying important information. Errors in language also mar the beauty of the article.
Several other qualities characterize a good parenting article. But the four main qualities mentioned above will usually do to create an appreciable parenting article.
