DEV Community

Nathan Kallman
Nathan Kallman

Posted on

How do you know you've written a "good" article?

How do you know? Do you have a reviewer or editor? Do you measure by reactions or view counts? comments? Or maybe you "just know"...

I feel like the articles I cared least about writing have been my best performers (by orders of magnitude, in viewership, comments, and reactions); meanwhile some that I was truly interested in and excited about writing recently have had basically zero interaction.

Top comments (8)

Collapse
 
bhupesh profile image
Bhupesh Varshney 👾

I feel the same with you totally!!
Blogs in which I have put more effort, rarely get appreciated whereas the ones which just came from my intuition performed remarkably well.

I think this explains itself, forcing article content out of your head just for the sake of writing would probably lack the personal touch.

Collapse
 
bhupesh profile image
Bhupesh Varshney 👾

Regarding the point where I think if I have written "good enough" article boils to basically how many people related with the problem i wrote about.
And as long as you feel good about it. I don't think you need to worry about the quality (not accounting grammar and writing style)

Collapse
 
kallmanation profile image
Nathan Kallman

not accounting grammar and writing style

Do you have a way you check your grammar and writing style for free articles like on DEV?

Any tips on improving in those areas?

Thread Thread
 
bhupesh profile image
Bhupesh Varshney 👾

A while back @andrew created a nice tool to analyze articles on DEV.


Also, install the Grammarly web extension. the free version in itself gives useful insights as well!
I hope this helps
Thread Thread
 
kallmanation profile image
Nathan Kallman

That looks like a fantastic tool! Thanks for sharing!

Collapse
 
almenon profile image
Almenon

Having a good time writing it is one indicator. If you're in the zone you're probably onto something. You can also look at the ratio of hearts vs. views to see what percentage of people viewing the article liked it. Although this wouldn't account for people without a dev.to account who like the article but are too lazy to register 🤔

Collapse
 
jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

When I keep referring back to it in response to others.

Collapse
 
mxglt profile image
Maxime Guilbert

Honestly, I don't know and I think I don't write good articles.
I just do my best, thinking if my future-me will understand what I wrote.