Understanding Stop Words, And How To Avoid Them.
Every writer knows the painful truth: when you spend a lot of time and effort crafting a sentence, and then delete it because it contains that dreaded “stop word”. You know, that one little word or phrase, like “a” or “the”, which is technically unnecessary but can make all the difference in the world depending on what you are trying to say.
The craftier writers among you might seek to avoid stop words altogether. For example, “The man took a walk” and “The man took his dog for a walk” have the same basic meaning, but the first example uses a different arrangement of the words to avoid needless repetition.
All this talk about stop words might make you wonder: are they really so bad? Yes and no. Using the wrong one in its place could result in your reader not understanding what you are trying to say, or mistaking its meaning entirely. Depending on your purpose, this could be excusable.
On the other hand, stop words are known as “stop words” because they do stop things. They are an efficient way to limit the scope of what you want to communicate. If you want information on a particular topic in your search results, you can use stop words to make sure that you do not also see information about other topics.
For example, let’s look at two very important words: “the” and “a”. Both are used in the same way in most sentences, but they could not be more different at a functional level. The word “the” helps to narrow the scope of your search. If you want to find information on a particular topic, then the words “a” and “the” are both stop words that will help you get closer to your goal.
If you have ever used Google search to look for something specific and ended up with more results than expected, you know how important stop words can be. It is very easy for someone who does not understand how Google search works to accidentally get too many results.
Knowing this, we can begin to see how the search engine giant is able to provide hyper-specific results for even the most obscure subjects. Google knows what it is that you are looking for, and it will sort through the results to find exactly what you need.
However, this can only be done if you know what you are doing when you start typing your search terms into Google. For example, you might want to get a list of “best” web hosting providers. What do you do? How do you know where to begin? The answer is that there are no shortcuts here: your best bet is to use stop words in order to make sure that your search gets as specific as possible right at the outset.
It is easy to see why stop words are so important. They are the tools that search engines use to help you find exactly what you want, when you want it. If there was an easy and automatic way to avoid stop words in blog posts, then everyone would be using them. However, everyone does not have time to scour the web for 25 different blog post ideas every single week.
That is why it is so important for bloggers to remember about stop words and include them in their writing strategies at least once or twice a week. Stop words can make all the difference in the world when you are crafting content for your blog.
This is especially important if you are a blogger that wants to capture a very particular audience. For example, if you are looking to attract clients to your law firm from a specific part of the country, then using “a” and “the” when referring to that area will be absolutely crucial. You will be able to use a wide range of stop words in order to get just the results that you need.
Stop Words: Everything You Need To Know About What They Are And Why They Matter , (2019). Retrieved on March 20, 2019, from http://smallbiztrends.com/stop-words-everything-you-need-know/
["Stop Words: Everything You Need To Know About What They Are And Why They Matter"]
Includes: red flags, what they are, how to avoid them in your writing, how to use them and when you shouldn't.
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Conclusion
While stop words are still important, it is important to realize that the usage of them is not as simple as it was in the past. There are a lot more factors that contribute to how these kinds of words are used, and now it is important to know when to use them and when not to.
You can check out this post by Oxford University Press on stop words at https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/blog/know-when-to-use-stop-words
This article can also be seen at a few more locations:
https://medium.