13 How Do I Write Articles?

Hannah hadn’t been much of a writer until she finished her education and became a full-time professional. When she started her professional practice, though, Hannah discovered that she still had much to learn. Hannah also had a practice base to build among her clientele and a reputation to make among her professional peers. Within months, Hannah discovered that she could pursue all three objectives, her own education plus building a clientele and elevating her reputation among peers, by writing and publishing articles. And so, Hannah set to work researching and writing articles for a few minutes early every morning in the office before others arrived. Within a couple of years, Hannah had several solid articles out, each on topics she and her peers needed to learn and where her clients needed her service. 

Articles

Although they often appear online, whether in the digital form of a refereed journal or simply as additional web content, articles play a different role than blogs and web pages. While blogs update and web pages inform, articles deepen and broaden a profession’s knowledge base. Articles can simultaneously serve as educational, marketing, and trust-building tools, like other higher-quality web content. But articles are not primarily for the web surfer. They are instead for the researcher, for someone who needs and is looking for a deeper dive on a specific topic. The researcher may be another professional in the same profession as the article’s author, or the researcher may be a consumer, client, or deeply curious soul. Whatever the reader’s role and motivation, an article gives the reader the deeper pool of thought and analysis into which to dive. Articles don’t just share information. They also analyze, giving the rationale and other workings behind and beneath the information. Respect article writing and your opportunity to fill the pool for those deeper dives. 

Professionals

Writing articles is a required or helpful task in any number of roles and professions. Copywriters, content writers, technical writers, ghostwriters, columnists, commentators, and web strategists, all in writing professions, and other professionals whose primary role is to practice some other profession, all write articles. Professionals commonly writing articles include lawyers, judges, medical researchers, engineers, accountants, bankers, psychologists, counselors, social workers, teachers, administrators, leaders, pastors, and those in business. They do so to develop their own knowledge, insights, and expertise, to promote their fields, to advance the practices of others in their fields, and to promote their own reputation for insight. Professionals who write articles about their field, on the side out of their own time or as an accepted part of their hands-on practice, become educators and leaders in their field and broader communities by doing so. No matter your profession, consider writing articles about your field. A profession exercises specialized knowledge and expertise. Contribute to that knowledge and expertise by writing articles. 

Purposes

The above paragraphs have already shared the primary purpose of an article, which is to broaden, deepen, and share specialized knowledge, whether medical, legal, financial, technical, practical, or otherwise. Specialized knowledge means things that are beyond the ready reach of the lay or other general reader. An article’s purpose is to make an expert out of the non-expert or at least to show the non-expert that the subject involves deeper expertise. You may, for instance, find articles not just on the paint to purchase and apply for marine uses, which would be little more than marketing web content, but also how, chemically, the paint’s properties meet marine challenges, along with the particular issues the painter would need to address to ensure the paint’s performance. Articles explain underlying qualities, issues, and processes so that the reader researching the article’s subject comes away better able to perform a peculiar practice involving a greater degree of expertise than a lay person holds. Beyond that fundamental purpose, unusual if not unique to articles, articles can also market, sell, build brands, build trust, earn reputation, and so on, across the several purposes for which we commonly use other forms of writing. 

Types

At the highest level, an article is an article, having that fundamental purpose of developing and sharing specialized knowledge and expertise. Yet professionals who write articles know the big difference between an article published for general educational purposes and a scholarly article published primarily for professional purposes. Professors, for instance, generally have a publication requirement for tenure in which they must produce a certain number of scholarly articles, published in professional journals with editorial boards, within a certain period. Unlike articles published for general consumption, a scholarly article or study does little or nothing to make it readable and accessible, perhaps other than to include an abstract at its beginning, although abstracts can be even more dense and unreadable than the rest of the article. Instead, a scholarly article does everything to document for the reader that the scholarship is sound. If that means dense prose and hundreds of denser footnotes, then so be it. Recognize the type of article you are writing, the reading skill and professional education of its intended audience, and its special requirements. If you want to make your reputation within your profession, write abundant scholarly articles. If you want to make your reputation outside your profession, write abundant articles for general consumption.

Audiences

As the prior paragraph has just indicated, articles may seek to serve only their professional audience. Virtually no one reads a medical study other than medical researchers, physicians, and medical policy makers. Likewise, virtually no one reads law journal articles other than lawyers, judges, and legal policy makers. Yet writers often face the task and opportunity to produce articles for a broader or different audience than the article subject’s associated profession. Articles for the profession’s customers or clientele are an example. See, for instance, the popular materials that famous hospitals and large health insurers and systems publish for medical patients. Those articles may be summaries or simplified abstracts of scholarly articles published in refereed medical journals, dumbed down, if you will, for the lay reader. Professionals write articles not just for their own profession and those clients and patients whom they directly serve but also for policy makers and to influence the public. The audience for whom you write your article can make a vast difference in the readability level, structure, content, and pitch or angle toward which you write your article. Know your audience. 

Topics

The authors of scholarly articles choose their topics primarily to advance knowledge. Refereed journals publish articles based primarily on that factor, whether the article advances the profession’s knowledge on a current issue of significance to the profession or public. Thus, your choice of topic for a scholarly article may be the single most-important factor in whether you get the article accepted and published in a reputable journal. Do substantial topic research before committing to an article topic. Do not waste your time writing an article the topic of which other articles have already addressed. Journals don’t publish preempted articles. Indeed, beware writing on a hot topic that other authors of greater prominence may be simultaneously addressing. You may have other journals and authors preempt your topic when you’re already well into or through it. Articles written for general consumption for website publishing, rather than to advance the profession’s state of its art and science in a refereed journal, may address any current topic of interest, whether or not preempted. Website owners and editors generally look for so-called hot topics, meaning those issues currently in the public consciousness. 

Co-Authors

Authors of scholarly articles often entertain co-authors. Their reasons for doing so may be to broaden and deepen the expertise that the article will reflect. If you don’t know everything that you need to know to write a scholarly article, then recruit a more-knowledgeable co-author. Junior authors often do the grunt work of researching and writing, while senior authors develop the special insight, guide the process, and use their reputation to help gain article publication. Articles written for general consumption don’t generally require the deeper or broader level of expertise that co-authors would bring. But you may nonetheless desire a co-author for your general-consumption article, especially if you don’t know the area well enough to be confident in the technical matters that you express. As a professional writer, you may also ghostwrite articles for general consumption published on websites, without any author credit or with credit to the professional for whom you write the article, who chose the topic, and who guided and edited your writing. Don’t ghostwrite for scholarly journals. Doing so may violate publication credit conventions.

Authority

Articles typically cite and rely on authority. Specialized technical knowledge advances based on its general acceptance within the profession. You don’t publish scholarly articles on cockamamie theories. Your article, if published for a journal or primarily for professionals accustomed to looking for your authority, thus needs to show that you have grounded your article in the accepted theory. Every significant assertion that your article makes may need you to cite your authority, whether in another article or study, or in laws, rules, regulations, treatises, or other authoritative materials, for making that assertion. Scholarly articles published in print journals typically use footnotes to cite published authority. The number, content, format, and quality of your footnotes can go a long way toward determining whether a journal accepts your article for publication. Website articles published for general consumption may use footnotes or may instead link directly to sources. Learn the conventions and expectations for how you handle authority in your article. You won’t generally gain publication without demonstrating expertise in your use of authority. 

Structure

A common structure for an article is to first state the issue, problem, policy question, or other unresolved tension the article intends to address. The statement of the issue lets the reader know whether they’ve found the right article to read. The issue’s statement also ensures that the article will focus on the issue’s analysis and resolution. The issue’s statement should also include sufficient context to explain how the issue arises and what significance the issue holds for the profession, field, or reader. The article’s next section generally addresses the current authority or state of the art or science, as it may address the issue. The article then analyzes how that authority recommends the issue’s resolution, whether for instance by option A, B, or C. That analysis may be from a predictive or instrumental stance, such as option A will likely produce the best results, or may be from a financial, philosophical, moral, aesthetic, or other stance. The article’s final section states the conclusion. Adopt this structure or another logical structure for your reader to follow. 

Tone

The tone and style of scholarly articles may be as formal, technical, and professional as writers can produce. Examine articles already published in the journals in which you would like to see your article published, to match their tone and style. Scholars don’t generally fool around. You won’t generally see humor, sarcasm, colloquialisms, or even creative writing forms or film, song, or other cultural references. You will often see quotes of other authoritative materials, with proper citation. Articles for general publication online, not in refereed journals, may take on a much more accessible tone and may have some of the above creative references and features that would be anathema in a scholarly article. But even those articles would generally have a more-serious, clear, concise, and technical tone. Know your article type, audience, and publication forum. 

Drafts

Articles, especially scholarly articles in refereed journals, may go through several drafts. For a scholarly article, you may write a first draft, share it with associates, produce a second draft incorporating their comments, share it with a mentor, produce a third draft incorporating the mentor’s comments, submit it for publication, receive a conditional acceptance if you revise the article as the editorial board recommends, produce a fourth draft meeting the publication conditions, and then go through subsequent drafts in the editing process. If you’re not up to laboring over your article over an extended period, with periodic gaps when others are reviewing or editing it, then don’t plan on scholarly publication. By contrast, you may produce only a single version of an article you write for general consumption under website publication. 

Publication

As indicated a couple of times above, scholarly journals can have elaborate submission processes for publication consideration. You may need to submit your completed scholarly article in a specific format within a specific time frame, while completing a submission questionnaire, and then wait for weeks or months for an answer. The response may be a rejection, acceptance for a current edition of the journal, acceptance for a future edition of the journal for which you must wait, or conditional acceptance requiring your article’s revision. Given the delays and other vagaries of scholarly article acceptances, you may wish to make multiple simultaneous submissions, although doing so may disqualify you from some preferred journals. Gaining publication in a premier refereed journal may also be more political, involving who authored the article and their professional reputation and associations, than merit based. If you’re not up to these scholarly article publication challenges, then write articles for websites, where the owners may retain and pay you, give you the topic, and effectively guarantee your article’s publication if meeting the owners basic requirements. 

Editing

As the above paragraphs suggest, scholarly articles generally require substantial editorial review and may require substantial editing. The editorial board or your assigned individual editor may request that you make certain edits, which may be substantial. Alternatively, the assigned editor or team of editors may propose substantial edits of their own, for you to accept. Rejecting proposed edits may compromise the publication of your scholarly article. At the least, rejecting edits may lead to a struggle over editorial rights and interests. Hope for a skilled and congenial editor, and a smooth editorial process. By contrast, articles you write for general consumption and website publication may involve scant editing. 

Reflection

Which would you prefer to write, a scholarly article published in a refereed journal or an article for general consumption published on a website? What professional or technical education and expertise do you have to draw upon for articles, whether scholarly or general? If you don’t have substantial technical or professional education or expertise, do you nonetheless have a knack for adopting technical or professional language and constructs, on which you could draw to write articles for general consumption? Are you, in other words, a quick learner who can generate sound articles on relatively technical topics in various fields? How comfortable would you be in working with co-authors who have technical or professional education and expertise, in fields where you don’t? Would you be willing to ghostwrite articles for professionals for marketing or other general educational use on their own websites? How comfortable would you be working with editors who may request significant modifications to your articles? 

Key Points

• Articles develop and share specialized knowledge and expertise.

• Professions write and read articles to broaden and deepen knowledge.

• Articles educate professionals and inform their clients and the public.

• Scholarly articles serve professions but general articles the public.

• Article audiences include professionals, clients, and policy makers.

• Beware wasting writing a scholarly article on a preempted topic.

• Articles often attract and employ co-authors for greater expertise.

• Article structure states the issue, authority, analysis, and conclusion.

• An article’s tone should be technical, precise, and professional. 

• Articles can involve multiple drafts with editorial boards and editors.

• Article editors cite check authorities and confirm content and format.

• Journals publishing articles can have elaborate submission processes.

Read Chapter 14.