We read a lot of parenting articles from all over the web. Doing the following will help your article come across as polished and professional.
Grammarly helps catch a lot of little mistakes. We understand that no one is perfect and we can look past a typo here or there, but we do ask that you revise and proofread your work before submitting to us.
- “In today’s society” (What does this mean? If you’re using this line, then you might need to re-focus the point of your sentence)
- “This parenting gig” (gig – now’s your chance to be more creative)
- “We moms” (our audience is mothers, so it’s redundant to clarify “we.”)
Punctuation goes inside of quotes. Example: “What do you want to do today?”
Using apostrophes instead of quotation marks. These little guys ‘ ’ are used for contractions and possessives (e.g. don’t, Mike’s). These guys “ ” are used for speech and to air quote words in writing (“Mama, I love you.” He said he was “working late.”).
It’s probably “mom” and “dad,” not “Mom” and “Dad.” There are only two times these words need to be capitalized, (1) when they are at the beginning of sentences and (2) when they are being used as a proper noun, as in someone’s name: I told you, Mom, I don’t need help with that. Otherwise, it’ll look something like this: As moms, we are always multitasking.
No emojis in articles. Save 
and 
for texts and social media. The fun and challenge of writing is conveying those feelings through your words.
Avoid starting your article with the word “It.” Example: It all started after my son’s first birthday.
What all started? You haven’t told us anything yet. Find a new way to begin.
Write with a working title in mind. If you’re not sure what to title your article, then it may not have a strong enough point of view. Once you’ve finished writing, compare what you wrote to your title. Does it match? If not, maybe the title needs to be changed or maybe you have competing ideas in the same article that should be separated into two pieces.
No need to double space after sentences. This is a hard habit to break, but it’s just not necessary anymore now that we write on computers. The sentences look too spaced out once published online.
Limit ellipsis (…) Those three little dots can be used to express hesitation, a pause, changes in mood, suspense, or thoughts trailing off. They’re also overused in blog writing. Be judicious for increased impact.
