But did you know that one of the features of English that make it such a rich language is a prevalence, unusual among the world’s languages, of synonyms, thanks to the fact that we have retained words from both Anglo-Saxon and French (and often other languages) that have the same meaning?

And have you considered that whether you choose a word derived from Anglo-Saxon or one borrowed from French or one of its Latinate relatives has a significant bearing on your writing voice?

Thanks to the Norman Conquest, for example, the Anglo-Saxon language became a second-class (or lower-class) tongue in England, supplanted in political and social contexts by Norman French, and therefore many cognates reflect the differences in relations to things between the two classes (who though their languages differed were closely related ethnically).

For example, Anglo-Saxon words for animals raised for food often reflect the role of Anglo-Saxons as keepers of livestock (cow, calf, sheep, pig), whereas the words obtained from French describe the food itself as it appeared on the table after cultivation and preparation by Anglo-Saxon farmers and servants (beef, veal, mutton, pork).

By the same token, many Anglo-Saxon words seem, by comparison with French, more plainspoken — more earthy (or earthly, rather than terrestrial, just as Anglo-Saxon heaven is more basic than the French-based equivalent, celestial). Other cognates that point out the differing perspectives are pairs like the humble home and the magnificent mansion, though often, for every master (French) there is a lord (Anglo-Saxon).

Of course, Anglo-Saxon acquired many words from Latin and its descendants before the Conquest, such as the introduction of many religious terms during the spread of Christianity and the expansion of the language due to trade with other European countries.

Likewise, the Germanic tribes that coalesced into the people of Anglo-Saxon England adopted many Latin and Greek terms before their arrival in Britain. And even after the largely Norman aristocracy abandoned their form of French in favor of Middle English, the latter language acquired many words from the influence of the Renaissance, and early Modern English was likewise enriched by the Enlightenment.

Notice, in your writing, whether you have an affinity with Anglo-Saxon or a French fetish, or whether you are bilingual: Do you give, or present? Do you describe someone as misleading, or deceptive? Do you refer to fatherly, motherly, or brotherly bonds or affection, or paternal, maternal, or fraternal feelings?

Though the number of English words derived from each language is about the same, the ones most essential for basic communication are of Anglo-Saxon origin, and many people correlate heavy use of Latin-derived words with verbosity and overblown language.

What’s your style? Do you worship words from Anglo-Saxon, or do you favor French forms?

1. Remove Redundancy

Avoid double-teaming terms like “a period of one week,” “end result,” “free gift,” and “personal opinion.” Watch for phrases that echo the quality in question: “oval in shape,” “larger in size,” “shorter in duration,” and the like. Omit redundant words that are already implied as part of an abbreviated term, such as machine in “ATM machine.”

2. Reduce Phrases to Words

Replace a descriptive phrase following a noun with a one-word adjective that precedes the noun: “People who experienced at traveling know better than to label their luggage,” for example, can be revised to “Experienced travelers know better than to label their luggage.

A modifying phrase, similarly, can be reduced to a simple adverb: “Sympathizing with her concerns, he nodded in response to her complaint,” for instance, is more concisely expressed as “He nodded sympathetically in response to her complaint.”

Delete extraneous phrases such as “which is” and “who were,” as shown here: “We drove down Lombard Street, which is considered the crookedest street in the world” is easily simplified to “We drove down Lombard Street, considered the crookedest street in the world.”

3. Omit Gratuitous Intensifiers and Qualifiers

Use adverbs that intensify or qualify in moderation: “They had an extremely unpleasant experience” isn’t accurate unless a subsequent explanation justifies the intensifier extremely, and “I was somewhat taken aback” isn’t necessarily an improvement on “I was taken aback.”

4. Expunge Expletives

“There are” or “there is” is a weak way to start a sentence. “There is a telling passage toward the end of the story” lacks the focus of (and the more vivid verb in) the sentence “A telling passage occurs near the end of the essay.”

5. Negate Nominalizations

“The report gave an analysis of the accident” uses a phrase where a single word suffices. (This is known as a nominalization, or smothering a verb.) When you see a “(verb) a/an (noun)” construction, convert the noun into a verb and replace the phrase with it. In this case, “The report analyzed the accident” is the more concise result. As with deletion of expletives, a stronger verb is an additional benefit.

6. Delete Superfluous Phrases

“At the present time,” “for all intents and purposes,” and “in the event that” are just a few of many meaningless phrases that clutter sentences. Trim them to tighten your writing.

7. Avoid Cliches

Likewise, “face the music,” “litmus test,” “tried and true” and other timeworn phrases add nothing to your writing but words; they’re useful only for padding a word count, but instructors and editors (and readers) will notice.

8. Eschew Euphemisms

Generally, words that disguise concepts degrade language, which is all about expressing, not repressing, meaning. For example, “collateral damage,” in reference to warfare (and, by extension, to all interpersonal relationships), invites derision. However, use of some euphemisms, such as those for human disabilities, is a well-meaning effort to preserve the dignity of the disabled, though some people argue that such cosmetic wording actually harms people by diminishing the seriousness of their condition, or that it is for the benefit not of the disabled but of people who would rather not be reminded of the disabled.

Here are ten things you can do to turn your content into the perfect blog post:

1. Pick the Perfect Title

Coming up with a direct but enticing title is the most important part of your blog post. You want readers to find your article easily with a simple search. Picking a title that will accurately match what the reader is searching for is obviously important in this age when nearly every Internet experience begins with Google.

The tricky part is striking the perfect balance between a relevant title and an exciting one. The perfect blog post title will be fun, funny, ironic or controversial while still keeping the core point of the article clear and present.

2. Make the Main Point Clear

The perfect blog post will let readers know what they are about to enjoy right away. Unlike a novel or movie, you don’t want the crux of the blog post to develop slowly. Internet readers have notoriously short attention spans, so make sure you open with an intro paragraph that lays out the post and lets the reader know he or she has come to the right place.

3. Make a List

One easy formatting trick is to organize your post as a list. Make your different arguments into numbered or bulleted points, or include bolded subheadings. Top-ten lists and rankings are interesting to readers and give the post a clear reason to be read to the end. It also makes the post organized and clearly shows the reader what the key points will be.

4. Linkbait

The perfect blog post will have content that other bloggers want to link to. Posts with “How to…” or “Top 10” in the title tend to get a lot of blogosphere attention. A great blog post also needs to have a large number of outbound links in the body. This is will help other bloggers notice your work and give you a return link, and will also give readers a feeling that you have done your research before writing your post.

5. Make It Attractive

Making your post look nice is a quick and easy way to make readers happy. Before making a post public, take time to go back and format it to your liking. Make keywords bold, form organized or bulleted paragraphs, cut out unnecessary content to shorten up the post, enlarge titles and subject lines, and so on. A perfect post will be a pretty post.

6. Include Multimedia

Even if your writing is the richest on the Internet, adding images or videos is crucial to breaking up the text and keeping things interesting. If you are writing a travel post, include attractive images of the destination. If you are writing an editorial piece, embed a fun video clip that helps illustrate your point. Multimedia livens up a post and is a critical part of the perfect blog post.

7. Stick to the Point

For a blog post to be perfect, it needs to be concise and it needs to stay on topic. As stated before, blog readers have a short attention span. When they search for a specific subject, they want the post to deal with that subject and not meander between several topics. Unless your post is about a Hollywood star or political scandal, mentioning such an event will only draw readers who are really looking for a post on a different topic.

8. Use Keywords

The perfect blog post will be constructed with keywords in mind. A simple search using Google AdWords on a subject will let you know which related keywords are most commonly searched. Keeping those words in your title and throughout the body will make it easy for your audience to find your post and will make it clear to them that they have come to the right place.

9. Keep Length in Mind

Though it depends on the nature of your blog, keeping your post to an appropriate length is crucial. There is no optimal post length, but if it is too long, you risk readers getting impatient and leaving before they are done. In general, keeping a post under 1,000 words is a good rule of thumb. Keeping it between 500-800 words is ideal.

10. Be Original

Make your post unique! Don’t simply say what everybody else is saying. Add your mark by mixing it up and making your post stand out in some way. The perfect blog post will make your audience stop and think. It will conjure some sort of emotion and make readers talk amongst themselves. A good indication that you have done your job is a post with a lot of engagement. If a post has readers commenting or arguing, you know you have given your audience something valuable to talk about.

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While the perfect blog post starts with compelling content, there is clearly much more to the formula. Use these ten tips when you write your next post and sit back and enjoy the results!

About the Author: Sarah Fudin currently works in community relations for the University of Southern California’s Masters in Teaching program, which prepares teachers to earn their teaching credential. Follow her on twitter @USCTeacher. Outside of work Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.

1. The Narrative Essay

This form, employed when reporting about an event or an incident, describing an experience, or telling a story, is the basic mode in journalistic writing.

Practice in relating what happened when you witnessed an occurrence, or writing about what you were told by someone who witnessed it, is good training for becoming a newspaper reporter. Writing your recollections of something that happened to you is the basis of travel writing and similar content.

Meanwhile, effective storytelling is an essential skill for feature writing, which — as opposed to reporting, which is event driven — focuses on a person, a place, or a thing, such as a company or an organization. (Travel writing, actually, is a hybrid of all three forms of essay writing.) Many magazine articles, for example, and a number of nonfiction books, are basically profiles of one of these types of entities, and fiction writing, of course, is a form of narrative, albeit one that is invented or based on a real-life subject.

2. The Persuasive Essay

In this type of essay, the writer attempts to convince readers to agree with an opinion. In a traditional persuasive essay, the writer states the essay’s topic and organizational scheme clearly and concisely, then emphasizes and clarifies the topic’s significance by briefly mentioning the current event or recent publication, for example, that prompted the writer to discuss the topic. The rest of the piece consists of the writer’s argument in favor or in criticism of a position.

This persuasion can take the form of a scholarly critique or a review of a creative effort such as a live or recorded performance (for example, a music album) or a work in some medium (a film, for instance). In either case, the writer begins with a thesis, or statement to be proven, summarizes the position (or the plot or theme of a work of art), and provides further detail as necessary to amplify the essay’s points.

An essential component of a formal persuasive essay is a balanced discussion of an opposing viewpoint, while an informal review might include a mention of what an artist was attempting to accomplish by performing or creating and, for the sake of courtesy, could refer to how the artist succeeded in part even if the reviewer believes that the work is ultimately unsatisfactory.

Persuasive essays, like narrative essays, can be submitted for publication. Guest editorials in newspapers and magazines, reviews in the art sections of periodicals or on entertainment-oriented Web sites, or position statements for nonprofit organizations or political lobbying groups are all forms of persuasive writing that publishers of this content will pay for.

3. The Expository Essay

Expository writing can take the form of a how-to manual or other form of instruction, an explanation of a natural or technological process (an outline of the evaporation cycle, for example, or how to rebuild a car engine), a comparison of two similar subjects — though this form overlaps with the persuasive essay — or a discursion on a historical event or on future possibilities.

This last variation also has elements in common with narrative or persuasive writing, and in a sense, none of these types of writing is entirely exclusive. Therefore, if you, like almost all current or former students, have had experience with these forms of essay writing, you’ve already been trained (and, hopefully, coached) in how to write professionally.

And if you already do so, be confident that you can easily apply your skill in one form to taking on another: If you write position papers, you have no excuse not to move into instructional writing, if that’s what you want to do. Similarly, if you make a living explaining things in writing, don’t hesitate to explore fiction or nonfiction narrative writing if it appeals to you.

1. Keyword Top Labels

Use keywords for window titles and taglines, and keep them sharp and succinct. These labels are for helping Internet users get to your site because they typed them into a search engine and your site came up in the results, not for wowing visitors when they get there (assuming they get there, because you’re not using keywords to help searchers).

2. Keyword Display Copy

Employ keywords, not clever words, to begin headings, headlines, and link names, and keep the display copy brief. Most Web site visitors scan just the first one or two words of display copy. In “Where to Go on Vacation This Summer,” the first keyword appears as the fifth word of seven. (Go isn’t a keyword, because you don’t yet know what kind of going is involved.)

“Summer-Vacation Destinations,” by contrast, gives you three keywords out of three, with the two most important ones in first and second place. This approach is especially advantageous for a commerce site, but your personal blog shouldn’t be any different (assuming you want to attract new site visitors, not just impress current ones).

3. Avoid All Capital Letters

Don’t use all capital letters, even in display copy. All-cap text is harder to scan and to read. Do, however, use initial caps for headings and headlines.

4. Avoid Exclamation Points

Unless your site is all about bringing the funny — or attempting to do so — don’t use exclamation points. (Another exception: if all the i’s are dotted with circles or hearts.)

5. Omit Extraneous Spaces or Punctuation

All-cap initials and acronyms, of course, but don’t separate letters with word spaces — or with periods. Omit apostrophes when attaching a plural s to such abbreviations.

6. Avoid Superfluous Headings

Eschew headings and headlines like “Features” and “Links” for self-evident sections.

7. Make Navigation and Display Easy on the Eyes

Make it easy to find other pages and archived content, and avoid making the home page and other pages busy in general.

8. Keyword Navigation

Never use “Click here” or “More” (by itself) or “Next page” for a link name. Use keywords: “Archive,” “More Top 10 Lists,” “Ski Trip, Day 2.”

9. Limit Font and Background Styles

Avoid multiple fonts, font sizes, font colors, and background colors. Use one font for display copy and another for running text. Limit italics to emphasis of words and short phrases. Employ boldface generously in display copy but sparingly in running text.

10. Write for First-Time Visitors

If you want to attract a general readership, write for a general readership. Don’t dumb down, but do explain obscure terminology and do spell acronyms out. (You could provide a glossary, but briefly explaining, or spelling out, an unfamiliar term needn’t be distracting to either lay readers or experts.)