Quick and Easy Reminders
Writer’s guides contain information about proper grammar and writing tips, and provide authors with a quick resource if they have forgotten a rule or need a refresher course in, say, using quotations or semicolons.

Citing Sources
Although research and citing are a dreaded activity for many students, a paper or essay of any length will require the use of some sources. Having a writing guide on hand can help writers cite their resources correctly, as well as provide tips for avoiding plagiarism.

Style and Etiquette
For writers interested in improving their style, writing guides contain useful pointers, such as using active verbs and avoiding cliches. Writing guides also contain guidelines for creating manuscripts according to a particular association’s recommendations. Students will have to follow formatting requirements for a certain style, and authors interested in publishing will often be required to format their text a certain way as well.More info here: What Part of the Word Stealing Do They Not Understand?

Be Unique
One common reason an editor loses interest is that the writing imitates another writer or is too similar to content already published. Authors must learn to stand apart, either by choosing an entirely new, but still interesting, subject, or by infusing their writing with a new spin to set it apart from that other writer’s work.

Be Precise
Occasionally, writers become lazy or stuck in a rut, and their work begins to get stale. Usually, authorial laziness is reflected in imprecise or vague language; writers refer, for example, to a new hobby as “really great,” rather than “mentally stimulating.” Authors must learn to be exact and to select, with great care, words that contribute to the tone and style of the piece. Choosing the right word can make all the difference in whether a work catches the editor’s eye or gets dismissed.

Start with a Bang
Titles matter. As the introduction to a work, titles should be informative but leave a reader asking questions. An editor will be much more likely to appreciate a story about a person with Lyme’s disease if the title is, “Sleeping all Day: The Story of an Incurable Disease,” rather than, “Dealing with Lyme’s Disease.” Authors should learn to leverage the title’s power to draw people in.

Creating a good opening is as simple as thinking of personal experiences, and molding them to fit the theme of the article you have to write. When you create a piece which means something to you on a personal level, the creative aspect is going to be much greater, and the overall article and writting style is really going to shine through. So, when writting an opening, just mold the article theme to fit something that happened in your life which is personal to you, and you are going to easily put together a great piece.

Take a Break
Proofreading immediately after finishing a draft can cost authors because they are so familiar with what they’ve just written that their brains automatically correct the errors without throwing up a red flag. Authors should put their work away for at least a couple hours, if not overnight, before beginning the proofreading stage.

Use Your Mouth
Reading out loud helps authors catch errors because, while they might visually miss the error, authors can still hear it. Authors should read aloud slowly, in order to ensure they do not automatically correct the error as they read it.

Start at the End
Reading the paragraph or essay from the bottom up, one sentence at a time, pulls the text out of context and forces the author to look at each, individual sentence independent of its surroundings. Authors will notice more errors when they do this because surrounding sentences will not distract them.