Examples Of Bad Writing: Tips For Writers And Content Marketers 

Examples Of Bad Writing

What examples of bad writing have you come across? Do you know how harmful poorly written content can be to your website?

Today, almost everyone is a writer. Anyone that owns a laptop, or has graduated from college is an expert writer. 

The shocking part is most website owners don’t pay attention to the quality of articles they get when they outsource their writing tasks. They just publish whatever they receive and that is it. 

Content is important in any marketing campaign. Your SEO campaign won’t be successful without quality content and targeting the right keywords. 

So, what are the examples of poor writing? How can you identify these bad writings? Keep reading to learn more.  

Bad Writing Examples You Should Know 

How do you feel when reading a poorly-written blog post? Do you feel motivated or bored? Of course, bored would be the answer. 

Internet users don’t just go online because they want to be among the millions of people who visit the internet daily. People visit the internet for one specific reason – to get information. 

So, any article you publish online should be worthwhile. It should be worth people’s time and contain the needed information.

Bad writing can ruin your website. It can hamper your reputation, and business growth online. Conversion rates are usually very low when you publish poorly-written content. And you may even lose readers or customers. 

Now, let’s go through some of the examples of writing that is below par.

1. Punctuation Problem:

Have you ever read a blog post, book, or letter and felt the writer has a punctuation problem? If yes, how did you react to the situation? Of course, you might lose interest in reading the content. 

Using punctuation appropriately makes whatever you’re writing readable. Readers will understand your message better and make a decision.    

If you fail to use punctuation correctly, you’ll leave your readers confused. It is just like scattering coffee beans on the countertop. You won’t be motivated to do anything in such a kitchen until the mess is cleaned up. 

Punctuation marks create pauses in the sentence. They give readers a little push to keep reading. Check out the example of a write-up poorly that has punctuation problems, and notice how demotivated you were to keep reading. 

“The boys went home but could not find the magician they came late and did not have what it would take to wake the magician.”

You can see how long and boring the above statement is. It would have been clearer with proper punctuation. 

Another mistake writers make when writing is stringing two different sentences together. Check out the example below. 

 “Henderson was the first football player to show up at the party, you can travel to mars whenever you want.” 

Even with the comma, the sentence doesn’t look good. Both statements don’t correlate and can stand alone. One talks about a football player, while the other talks about something different, traveling to Mars. 

The best way to write the above statement is, “Henderson was the first football player to show up at the party. After the full stop, you can continue with the second statement. 

It doesn’t matter your tone or style of writing. It doesn’t matter who the readers are. Use punctuation marks to avoid sending the wrong message about your writing capability. 

Why am I paying more attention to this? The thing is most people don’t focus on punctuation marks when writing blog posts. They forget that punctuation mark errors can turn readers off a website or web page. 

Your website can be the prettiest or most professional-looking, and your SEO campaign would be in shambles. Why? Your blog posts or SEO content are not good enough in your readers’ eyes.

So, please, start paying attention to punctuation. Edit your work ruthlessly after writing and pay close attention to your commas, full stops, quotation marks, etc. Where were they placed properly or not?

2. Sentence Length Problem:

Sentence length is an important factor to consider when assessing the quality of a blog post or content. Unfortunately, most people don’t pay attention to it. They unconsciously use too many long sentences in their content. 

 Well, firstly, what does sentence length imply? It means the number of words used in a sentence. Content that has too many long sentences would be boring to readers.  

When is a sentence considered too long? A sentence is too long when readers cannot remember how the sentence started when they reach the end. 

Sentence length determines the readability of your content to an extent. Check out the table below to know how important this is. 

Number of words used in a sentence Difficulty level 
8 words or less Super easy to read and understand
11 words Easy to read and understand
14 words Fairly easy to read and understand
21 words Fairly difficult to read and understand
25 words Difficult to read and understand
29 words Very difficult to read and understand

You can mix short and long sentences in your content. But when using long sentences, aim for sentences that are 15 to 20 words long. 

Writing this way would help you convey your message in a balanced way and avoid choppy sentences. Keep in mind that short sentences pack a punch and are handy when emphasizing critical points, but you must mix things up a bit. 

Now, what do long sentences do? They add rhythm to your content. So mix them up a bit. Sprinkle the long and short sentences in your content creatively. 

Using both sentence lengths would add a bit of drama and entice your readers. 

3. Paragraph problem:

The paragraph is another factor to consider in your writing. Unfortunately, some writers and website owners don’t pay close attention to it. 

So, what is the ideal paragraph length to use? A paragraph can be a sentence or more. You may have read blogs where the writers limited their paragraphs to a single sentence. 

There is nothing wrong with this. Ensure your paragraphs aren’t more than 150 words long when put together. Aim for three to eight sentences per paragraph. 

Readers find it difficult to read and understand content with long paragraphs. Some won’t even bother going past the first few lines of the content. 

So, help your readers develop interests in your work. Use shorter paragraphs to open up your content and create more white spaces. 

Conclusion

So, these are examples of bad writing. You can go through them to avoid making mistakes that can jeopardize your work. 

You’re writing for people to read and not just for yourself. So your content has to be readable. Otherwise, you may start losing reputation, traffic, and more. 

Poor-quality content can hurt a website in more ways than most people think. It can hamper your website’s growth and even reduce online traffic over time. 

So, do the right thing when writing content. Avoid mistakes that can jeopardize the quality of your work. Use short paragraphs, short sentences, and the right punctuation marks.