Constant Content

Hi, I am writing a tutorial on one of the functions of Excel. I think it would be best to do this in PowerPoint, as there are screen shots in addition to text. Is that acceptable, or does it have to be in word?

Please do not submit in Power Point.

This thread might be the most relevant to my question. I'm one of those people who hate to start a new thread unless I cannot find something remotely like it.

My question is simple. Does a tutorial really need an introductory paragraph? Especially when the requested content ad specifies a word count of two hundred words or less?

When searching for online content most people will look at the name of the article. When they click on those instructions, they usually don't care about introductions. They just want the answers they were looking for. Call me old fashioned, but when I'm searching for instructions I hate getting ten thousand results which might or might not contain the answers I'm looking for.

For example: "How to create an animated gif with Adobe ImageReady CS."

Nine times out of ten the search results will return three pages of ads for other programs, and results for articles which contain those words for another ten pages. Usually the latter are reviews of the program in question.

I could go on, but I think I'm getting my point across.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

As per our guidelines, all articles must have introductory paragraphs. This is simply professional. And introduction tells the reader what they can expect from the article and whether or not they want to read more. It can be as simple as a sentence in the case of a short tutorial. "This tutorial will tell you how to properly assume the yoga pose known as 'downward dog.'"

Word limitations are less strict with web writing because space is not an issue. If it is not realistic that all necessary information can be included in the specified or suggested word count, it's preferable to go over. The customer may be willing to pay a higher price for a more in-depth article.

Thanks,
Ed

Ed,

Thanks for the quick reply. That helps me out a lot. Some of the work I've done in the past as required me to strictly adhere to word count. Granted, most of those have been for fiction and satire.

My wife pointed me to this site because of my problems with some of the other sites like Helium. (Once you post your work there, you can never assign exclusive rights for the piece to anyone.) It took me six months to get them to take down my fiction and book excerpts. (No publisher will ever consider a piece they can't purchase exclusive rights to.)

Thanks Again,
Barry

No problem. Some authors may be able to chime in here, but I'm under the impression that, whilee word count may be important to some customers, more important factors include usefulness of the article, keyword/SEO potential, and overall quality.

I asked the question of the person requesting the content, and he wasn't real concerned with the word count as long as it was useful. Now, I can write what I wanted to without worrying so much about the count.

Thanks,
Barry