8 great ways to make sure your content never gets published

These missteps can send editors a message that you’re not up to snuff—or that you’re too difficult to work with regularly. Here’s how to step up your game.

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You face another looming deadline, another subject-matter expert to interview, another blank Word doc mocking you with its blinking cursor as you try to wrest another 1,000 words from your poor, tired brain.

Writing isn’t easy, and editors get that. They expect to make some revisions and changes to your copy, but these eight serious blunders will make an editor question working with you and your agency again.

1. You don’t understand your audience . It’s not a certainty that the people who read “The Economist” aren’t also poring over “Cosmopolitan,” but it’s a safe bet. If you’re writing a byline for a specific publication’s audience, then they’re your audience, too. Think about why they would care about your topic, what they’d want to learn and why they’d take the time to read it.

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