I don’t know what that is called. I’m not up on the technical names for these things. I just like to use them.

Oh, and check out what happens when you highlight some words. You can make different sized fonts for headings and subheadings. You can bold and use italics. There are also two ways to quote things.

Like this

Or like this

Cool huh? I use the first one when I am writing about what someone has actually said. The other one I use to put emphasis on a point I am trying to make.

So those are a few of the basic tools I use for formatting. Another big mistake I made was not BREAKING UP PARAGRAPHS! Seriously Jess, hit enter once in a while!

Try to keep the paragraphs short. It is much easier for people to read this way.

Personally, I don’t have the best eyesight so when I am reading, shorter paragraphs are easier for me to concentrate on.

My best tip for formatting is write first, format later. Get your words on the page before you worry about what it looks like. You can always go back and make it look good after those beautiful words are out there.

Add or Remove Content

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Go back and re-read what you wrote. Does it sound good? Do you have anything to add to it? Is there stuff there that doesn’t need to be there?

Rework it. I’m not saying rewrite the whole thing. If there is something there that doesn’t need to be there, take it out. Or if you want to add more, go ahead.

I had one article where I took the entire first section out. It didn’t need to be there. It didn’t add much to the article so I scraped it. Then I added a few more things to make my point and BOOM, new article!

Unlist Then Publish The New One

Photo by Ekaterina Shevchenko on Unsplash

You can either delete or unlist your old story. Do that before submit the new one. You don’t want two of the same thing out there!

To do this, go to “edit story” and then “manage unlisted settings” and click “yes”. That will make it so your story is still there but not visible to anyone.

You can also do the same to delete it. On your edit menu, just click “delete” and your story will be gone!

I use the unlist setting just because there is something sad to me about my story vanishing. You do what you want though. Stories don’t actually have feelings so you won’t hurt your story’s feelings by deleting it.