Online reading requires a different kind of focus. We’re easily distracted by ads, chat notifications, and emails, and we have an endless, ever-growing stream of information from around the world that begs for our attention and time.

This makes it hard for you as a writer, blogger, or business owner to attract your audience’s attention and keep them interested and thirsty for more.

This article will help you engage your readers by making some simple changes to your writing style and content.

Scannable Content

Make your readers’ life easier

– or don’t bother writing at all. Nobody’s going to read a 20-line paragraph. Structure your content in a way that’s easy to skim and scan on a smartphone or tablet. People want to be able to choose what to read and what to leave behind, and writing novel-like content is turning them away.

Use bullet points, headlines, and strategic formatting

to make it easier for the reader to navigate and understand your content. Highlight important takeaways and write short paragraphs of 4 sentences or fewer.

Be sure to use numbers.

They give people a reason to read because you’re giving them information they can quantify and readily understand. Consider these two headlines:

Ways you can engage your readers and keep them coming back for more

5 ways you can engage your readers and keep them coming back for more

Do you see how the insertion of the number makes this headline so much more concrete, and the whole article a whole lot more valuable?

That’s the power of numbers. People want to know in advance what’s in it for them and giving them numbers gives them this reassurance. They know they’ll easily find tips they can quickly and easily use.

A great tip for ensuring your content is scannable and user-friendly is to re-read only your highlighted content, headlines and subheadings, text in bold or italics, and anything else you’ve drawn attention to through special formatting.

If it gives you the gist of the whole article, then you’ve done a great job!

Write With Style. Take a different road.

Engaging a reader is about offering something new. Something they’ve never heard or thought of before. It might be hard depending on your subject matter or business niche, but it’s nonetheless possible.

Use a metaphor to speak for a well-covered topic and don’t be afraid to contradict ideas and trends everybody else seems to agree with. Take the road less traveled and speak from a place of confidence.

As long as you back your claims with facts and arguments, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Your readers will be exhilarated to read something fresh, something daring!

Set the Right Tone and Have The Best Emotional Involvement

If you’re the blog author for a multinational company, too-casual language is a big no-no. It sounds unprofessional and makes your company seem unreliable.

On the other hand, if you’re a food blogger and your writing is filled with scientific jargon or too much historical information, this will distance you instead of bringing you closer to your audience. To engage your readers you need to speak their language.

Tone is the personality of your writing. It’s how you sound in your readers’ minds and how they picture you. Decide whether it is going to be defined by its humor and wittiness, its astuteness, or its neutrality.

Implement these three tips and you will have more people reading through your content!

Ultimate Vocabulary guarantees to help you increase your vocabulary knowledge! Learn more words and apply them in your writings.

Do you ever wonder what makes a word … word-y? What are the criteria for a word to become an officially recognized part of a language?

There are many people who argue about where that tipping point is. Whether words like “slacktivism,” “bae,” and “feels” are proper words or not is still under debate. So to jump into the conversation, let’s look into how a word becomes a word.

What’s In A Word

For words to gain real-word status, a lot of people have to use them. If “selfie” and “vape” weren’t being used by a growing number of people then they would never acquire proper word status. In fact, “vape” was so extensively used that Oxford Dictionary named it the Word of the Year for 2014.

The Oxford Dictionary explains why “vape” was chosen:

“ You are thirty times more likely to come across the word vape than you were two years ago, and usage has more than doubled in the past year.”

Technology Leads the Way

So usage and popularity are two main factors that affect a word’s word status eligibility. Culture is the third.

Large scale events, new technologies, and advancements in science and other industries also give way to the creation and adoption of new words.

If researchers discover a new gene, a new correlation between atoms, or a new planetary system, words need to be created or borrowed from other languages to describe that concept.

Looking at word list from past years, it instantly becomes obvious how prevalent technology-related words are. And because technology lends itself to fast – almost viral – adoption, it should come as no surprise that in 2014 the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary list was dominated by techie words:

– Big Data

– Social Networking

– Tweep

– Hashtag

– Gamification

Nothing’s Permanent, Not Even Word Status

Rebekah Otto, Director of Content at Dictionary.com, says in an interview with Mental Floss that there’s a very thin line between slang and informal language. She poses this question to readers:

“What’s the line that delineates a phrase like “brogrammer” between being slang and an official word?”

Words are living organisms that are influenced by our culture and defined by human behavior, global trends, and technological innovation.

This can be easily observed by how fast a word with merely slang status – that is, a very informal word, used by a minority and not used in written language – gets informal word status or even proper word status.

For a word to enter the English dictionary, many happenstances have to collide. Cultural acceptance and adoption, usage, and online and offline media propagation need to be in place for a word to enter global consciousness and discourse.

But even if a word never gains Oxford Dictionary word status, it is still a proper word, in the minds and conversations of people that use it.  

Doctors use words that laypeople will probably never have to speak in their lives. Teens have their own slang words to communicate and affiliate with certain groups and identities. Professions of all kinds have their own obscure (to the uninitiated) words.

It could be said that a word becomes a word when it is spoken or used enough for it to make sense as a concept reference. Whether it is an officially accepted word or not, the status of a word should only worry you in circumstances when you need to use that word in formal writing or other contexts that require a certain level of formality.

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Learning a new language is a wondrous adventure. You travel in history, experience the culture, and taste a new way of living simply by learning the words that culture uses to express those concepts. But do you remember feeling the same emotions and sensations when you learned your first language – the one belonging to the culture you were born to? Probably not.

Acquiring Your Mother Tongue vs Learning a Foreign Language

There’s not much critical thinking involved when learning your native language. You learn to speak at a lightning fast speed, and amazingly you make up for anything that’s unknown or yet not solidified as a language rule through creative improvisation and substitutions. Children have an amazing capacity for vocabulary and communication that allows them to pick up a language without formal education, in a process that’s mostly unconscious.

Learning a language as an adult, however, is a different story. You already possess your native tongue, and you have experiences, emotions, beliefs, and opinions that influence and even interfere with your new language learning.

When you learn a second or third language your very own language often gets in the way. It leads you you make false assumptions about grammar rules and syntax, it confuses you with rules that do not exist in your language, and it leaves you feeling frustrated that you cannot find a corresponding entity or function in your mother tongue.

But that frustration, that ennui is surprisingly pleasurable if you look at it from the right perspective. You can in fact derive great satisfaction from learning a language so unfamiliar and disconnected from your own. You’re forced to reconsider the universality of your own language and understand how language defines your thinking and permeates your reality so extensively.

As the renowned Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has said:

“[T]he limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.”

Expand your reality, expand the place you inhabit

What’s so marvelous about language is the way that it expands your reality. Where you used to have only one tool to make sense of your world, now you have two. This is true especially if you’re learning a language that’s vastly different from your own because it belongs to a different language family; the linguistic and mental shock can be even greater.

It’s one thing for a Spanish native speaker to learn Italian. It’s an entirely different thing for an English native speaker to learn traditional Chinese.

When you learn a totally unfamiliar language, you can’t help feeling like a child. You are a clean slate. You learn everything from scratch. It’s not just a new language, it’s a new culture and a whole lot of history. A brand new world awaiting discovery.

As you advance your language learning and you shyly start speaking the language, a sense of empowerment arises. You feel a growing pleasure, and you feel more in control because you can use a language – a string of words and sounds that was previously completely unknown – to communicate. Even something as simple as learning how to express a feeling or statement in another language makes you feel powerful.

There are many reasons to learn a new language, but one of the most pleasurable is to get the freedom that comes from the ability to communicate in and understand a different language. Yes, learning a new language has many professional and social benefits, but none can compare to the euphoria experienced when you achieve the previously unimaginable: gaining a new tool for communication.

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Say you’re writing about unicorns and dragons. How do you compel a reader to stay on the page or click on the image to read the blog, if they’re not the sort of person who automatically clicks through to fantasy fiction sites? Yes, a relevant, high quality image could pique their interest, but is it enough? To hook any reader, you need to create an irresistible headline.

The word “irresistible: has several definitions. Here are two, both of which apply to your headline-crafting task:

Irresistible = Compelling

A headline needs to shock your reader (in a good way) or otherwise take your reader by surprise.

There’s so much saturation in online content that unless your headline shocks or draws the reader’s attention with something nonsensical or whimsical or intriguing, you will have a hard time trying to hook them.

You need to be careful, though. The headline needs to grab the reader’s attention, but it needs to also make sense both in and out of context. Many people won’t read the headline on your blog – they’re more likely to come across it on Facebook, Pinterest, or an RSS Feed. So the headline needs to be compelling, and it needs to make sense as a stand-alone sentence.

Irresistible = Accurate

Ever read a blog that didn’t even answer the question posed in the headline? A disappointed reader is one who won’t want to click on your future headlines if each and every one doesn’t live up to its promise.

How many times have you found nothing but disappointment and betrayal of your trust in a blog post that promised to tell you how to be rich without having to leave your house again, only to realize the actual blog content was completely irrelevant and was trying to sell you a new product?

You must respect your readers. Don’t promise things you cannot offer them. Be as accurate as possible. Yes, a factual discrepancy could happen, and mistakes are only human. But don’t consciously write misleading headlines for the sake of hooking your readers. They will eventually become disappointed with you and never read your blog again.

Opt for accuracy and professionalism and you will be rewarded.

– Here are a few extra takeaways to keep in mind when writing the perfect headline:

– Keep it short. Any headline longer than 6 words is generally too long for online readers.

– “You” headlines grab the readers and never let them go. Not really, but you get the point. A “You” or “Your” headline instantly hooks the reader because the reader is referenced in it. They’ll immediately think, “Hey, that’s me, and yes, I do want to know how to cook pasta!”

– Tap into readers’ insecurities. Using words like “stop” or “wrong” or “bad” or “don’t” makes readers wonder if they should be doing something differently. “Are you going on a road trip without these basic supplies? It could be dangerous.” Bam! Hooked.

– Ask a question. “Why” and “How” headlines pique the readers’ curiosity because more often than not, people desperately want to master everything.

– A list headline works well with readers too. In fact, listicles are widely shareable because there’s something irresistible about having “10 ways to wear your peplum blouse this summer.”

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Have you ever felt that a person texting you the message “OK.” with a period at the end might be angry at you for some reason? Ever felt that exclamation marks are like these happy-go-lucky fellas who are warm and amiable? We hear you.

Words are not the only things that carry emotion, state of mind, and mood. Punctuation marks are rich in conveying emotion and mood. In fact, on many occasions, punctuation marks can actually cancel out the very meaning a word might denote. For instance, consider how the statement “I’m fine.” is often interpreted to mean that the person is not happy, and not fine at all.. Used in this way, the period cancels out the very meaning of the sentence.

The austere, angry period

A full stop (a period) is the conventional, grammatically correct way to end a sentence. However, in the digital age of texting and emailing where instant communication on smartphones and tablets is the norm, it seems that when the period is used to end a sentence, this somehow unsettles the recipient.

The period is angry and looks way too serious. People using it in texts are more often than not aware of the period’s power to denote anger, frustration, disappointment, and a range of other negative emotions.

Texting and online chatting provide many examples of how the period is generally omitted in normal conversation. So unless you’re new to digital communication or angry at someone, using the full stop may communicate to the other person that something’s not quite as good as you say it is.

So, if you’re responding to an invitation to go out for drinks with, “Sure, that sounds great. I’d love to join you guys.” it might be seen as a reluctance to actually go out with that group of people. While grammatically correct, it’s emotionally incorrect.

The amiable exclamation mark and the … capricious … ellipsis

The period is not the only punctuation mark with a rich emotional side. For many people, the exclamation mark comes across as the nice guy in the punctuation family. While it can definitely be used to add emphasis to both positive and negative statements, these days it’s more often used in a sentence to indicate the sender is positive, warm, and even more sincere. It shows an excitement and benevolence that the angry, grumpy period conspicuously lacks. To prove this, here’s the same text from above, with one important change: “Sure, that sounds great! I’d love to join you guys!”

The notoriously unpredictable ellipsis wears many hats.

In digital communication, an ellipsis can mean a number of things. These three dots resting one next to the other can indicate a statement or provide innuendo. It’s up to the recipient’s interpretation, really. If you send out a message to someone inviting them to join you for drinks, and you get back the message “I’m tired …” then what are you going to think? Is the person saying they’re physically tired? Mentally and emotionally exhausted? Completely fed up with going out for drinks? You’ll probably text back for more clarification.

Are you aware of punctuation marks’ secret, rich life of emotion? How do you use punctuation marks to convey meaning?

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You know all of the basic capitalization rules. Start a new sentence with the first letter of the first word capitalized. Always capitalize the pronoun “I.” Always use a capital letter to start the spelling of the names of people, nationalities, countries, cities, and places.

However, there are more rules for capitalization, some of which are not that straightforward or widely used as they should be.

Here’s the complete list, so you don’t misuse capital letters again!

Capitalize proper nouns (names of people, places and things) and adjectives derived from proper nouns.

For instance, you will need to use capital letters for both George Orwell and “an Orwellian idea”, for an Oreo cookie and for a ComicCon fan.

Capitalize abbreviated words and acronyms.

For instance, UK, USA, NASA, and the APA should always be in all capital letters.

This helps alert someone not familiar with an acronym that this is not a proper English word but an acronym they’re reading.

Capitalize book titles, film names  and other cultural concepts and artifacts.

Capitalize names of book titles, film titles, paintings, publications and journals, organizations and any observance or special day.

Here are some examples: Labor Day, Moby Dick, The Journal of Academic Pediatrics, Picasso’s Guernica, and The Godfather.

Capitalize the first letter of days and months.

Don’t confuse months with seasons. Months and days of the week have to be spelled with a capital first letter, but the words for seasons (winter, spring, summer and fall/autumn) don’t.

Capitalize company names, brands and other trademarks.

Unless otherwise intentionally not capitalized by the company or brand itself, all brand and company names need to be capitalized.

Coca Cola, Marc Jacobs, Sony, Microsoft, and Samsung need a capital first letter. Because the owners of the company and brand have chosen to use lower-case letters to start their names, brand names like iPod and company names like eReflect are exceptions to the rule.

Capitalize titles, monuments and other historically important places, planets, seas, streets, and other landmarks.

You need to capitalize Big Ben and Stonehenge, the University of Harvard, and King James VI.

You need to also capitalize fictional places too. So Harry Potter, Westeros, and Voldemort all deserve a capital first letter.

Use a capital letter if you’re talking about a famous ship, train, or other vessel.

The Mayflower and the Titanic, the Orient Express and Apollo 13 all need a capital first letter.

Capitalize professional titles that come before the name of a person.

If you’re talking about Professor Wyatt and Doctor Watson, make sure you capitalize their titles (doctor and professor). Other titles that get capitalized include the following: King and Queen, Pope, Judge, Senator, Prime Minister.

There you have it, a complete list of the rules of English capitalization!

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You might want to hear her story. Fighting for the language that she grew up learning and loving.

Ultimate Vocabulary™ 2015 is the most recent (and admittedly most fun) version of the vocabulary building software. Apart from frequently-praised features like being cloud-based and enabled for social media sharing, Ultimate Vocabulary™ has another appeal: it comes packed with fun, addictive games.

By playing only a couple of games per day, you will find yourself mastering your new vocabulary without much effort, and having heaps of fun at the same time. Technology’s great, isn’t it?

Crazy Clues

How well do you know your vocabulary? Crazy Clues is an addictive vocabulary game you won’t get enough of. The game offers a few letter clues for each word, but then you have to figure out the whole word. If you get stuck, don’t worry, because you can get a hint to get your brain going again!

This is the perfect game to brush up on new words you’ve mastered by emphasizing their spelling.

Crossword

An interactive word game you will want to play time and time again. Clicking on a empty square will give you a hint for the word across and down the puzzle. As far as this game is concerned, you’re as good as your word definition knowledge!

Unscramble

How fast can you spot a word that’s all scrambled up? Find out with Unscramble, a fun vocabulary game that’s bound to be your next favorite vocabulary game. The faster you figure out the word, the more hints you earn for subsequent rounds. The game offers you a bit of help by giving you the word’s definition.

Word Finder

Another compelling vocabulary game, Word Finder dares you to identify a list of words in a matrix of letters. The words can be aligned vertically, horizontally, backwards and forwards. Let the word hunt begin!

Flash Cards

Another classic vocabulary-boosting game, Flash Cards help you truly get a word’s meaning through repetition and with its definition as your only clue. You can adjust the speed to make the game more challenging!

Hangman

A new take on another classic word game, Hangman lets you guess the right word by only giving you the word’s definition. You have ten shots per word before your poor man is hanged.

Word Recall

A classic vocabulary game that will help you improve your vocabulary retention is Word Recall. Read the word’s definition and choose the correct word from the list.

Spelling Drill

You never truly master a word until you know how to spell it. Make sure you are the orthography master with Spelling Drill, a fascinating game that urges you to pay attention to word orthography for more balanced and complete vocabulary knowledge.

Vocab Match

This is a challenging but very amusing game. You must match the right definition with the right word to win the round. You have six different words to get right per round.

Vocab Memory

If you think memory has nothing to do with vocabulary knowledge, think again. Vocab Match tests your vocabulary recalling power by letting you see a word under one card, then challenges you to find the matching definition under another card – hopefully, before you forget that word’s meaning!

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