Hello I'm João, I'm currently into writing things and understanding more about how they work behind the scenes. I think writing articles is a good way to express my thoughts and opinions about topics that for now has been mostly in my notes . And to start this journey here we are to learn and understand more about how to write better articles and their structures, like a step by step guide.
First thing I think is great to understand is that there are different ways, methods and structures to follow and it depends exclusively on what kind of article you want to write, what topic you want to discuss and if we will follow a formal or a more casual approach. As I said, there's not a unique way to write an article, and to exemplify it, here are the different types of articles that we can write:
- Argumentative: Defends an idea or opinion, based in evidences, references and data, usually ends with a clear author's position.
- Informative: Explains or presents information about a topic, focused on sharing knowledge and not convincing.
- Opinion: Shares personal ideas or experiences behind a topic, generally with a more casual and smooth approach.
- How-to: Teaches the reader how to do something, generally bringing step-by-step lists with practical examples and a clear structure.
There are a few more types that we can explore but for now I want to bring a focus in the most common types that I discovered, and a cool thing that is not a required rule to follow, that in some of these types we can mix two or three of them, bring our idea, share an experience and at the same time defend an argument, just let your creativity lead the process, the most important thing is sharing with clarity the article’s purpose.
How the article is structured
Here I want to dive into the technical conversation to understand the structure behind a written article, its sections, its particularities and ideas behind each paragraph. To have a practical example let’s assume a tech informative article as our target.
The first paragraph is the most important one, where we trigger the reader’s attention to the main issue, situation or information that we want to explain. The idea behind it is catching the reader’s attention and curiosity presenting a general overview about the article content.
Some platforms use the opening paragraph as a preview or summary when distributing your article. So if your goal is to attract as many readers as possible to your article, it’s a good idea to put some extra effort into the first paragraph.
First paragraph example:
Following to the next paragraph (that's not an actual paragraph by the way) we can add a content table to guide the reader through the main article titles and important sections that we want an extra focus. Usually we don't add the subtitles into the content table to avoid a big table or messy it all with too much information.
Main section
Now looking to the main section of the article, we have some ways to develop this section based in the article subject, content and the understanding of the structures, titles and subtitles. But as I said in the beginning let’s assume a basic technical article as example to follow a path.
Here we have three structure rules or tips to follow, that will guide our article and bring ideas and insights to develop more detailed content through the main section, these are the rules:
- Introduction to the main topic: Here we want to bring details and more information related to the topic presented in the first paragraph, answering questions and triggering reader’s curiosity again.
- Pros and cons: It's a situational section depending on our article subject or structure but it's a good section to present the advantages and disadvantages related to our main topic, developing and presenting it with information and details, bringing our opinion to generate discussion.
- Conclusion: Here usually we have the final paragraph aiming the appreciation of the reader’s attention and bringing our final opinion, or closing some argument that we’ve started in the Pros and cons section, we also can leave a message or not, it’s on you.
For a "Technical Informative Article" that we are assuming, with these three topics, we can freely develop information and our point of views, obviously they aren't mandatory, in this article for example that you are reading there’s no "Pros and cons" section, but that is the purpose, presenting the idea and letting it develop in our heads and bring a better version of it.
Basically around these three rules we can develop our article with a good structure and writing, with illustrations, using practical examples such as charts, code blocks or analogies we can achieve a smooth and easy comprehension about the main problem and the solution, or the idea itself, always aiming on clarifying the article’s purpose.
Conclusion
Well, during the writing process I’ve discovered and learned more than I was expecting. I had a great time exploring and understanding things while writing, each time I’ve read something new and wrote about it, it helped me clarifying my thoughts and made my ideas clearer. So I believe that all the topics covered in this article can also help clarifying and inspiring new ideas for your own “How to Write Articles” journey just like it did for me.
Oh, and by the way, no GPT nor any other AI was used here. :)
See y'all soon.
Top comments (2)
Amazing work, and I'm super glad that it worked out for you and you've actually learned something new and useful! Thanks for sharing your insights, João!
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. :)