When Mark Twain made that statement, I’m sure he was talking about the word choices that speakers and authors make in order to create specific thoughts and feelings in their listeners and readers.

Creating those feelings depends upon recognizing the subtle differences in the meaning of two words that are similar in meaning – but impart a slightly different feeling. For instance, the difference between eager and anxious.

One conveys happy anticipation while the other hints at worry, however slight. And yet, many use the two words interchangeably.

These differences are the reason why writers of every variety keep a Thesaurus by their sides. If you know any writers or speakers well, you’ve probably heard them saying “I’m searching for a word. I wrote _____ but it’s just not quite right. I know there’s a better word.”

They’re also the reason why those who submit stories to newspapers are often dismayed to find that someone has edited their piece and removed a word that they had carefully chosen. Sometimes, the whole meaning of an article is changed.

I can only imagine what Mark Twain would say if he came back today and saw what article / content spinners do to destroy the intent and ideas behind written words.

He might have a good laugh, because some of the results can be humorous. For instance, in one of my articles that was “stolen and spun,” the spinning software changed a sentence from “You can appeal to…” to the confusing: “You crapper appeal to…”

It took me a while to figure out how the spinner got crapper from can, but I finally did and had a good laugh.

Of course, I wasn’t pleased, because the person who did it left my name on it. I feel certain that Mark Twain would not be pleased either, if it was his own work that had been “spun.” Especially if the spinner failed to remove his name.

As an article writer, I’m often confronted with seeing my own words “spun out of control” in a manner that makes them unintelligible. But, for those who like a mental challenge, figuring out what the original article might have said can be entertainment.

For instance, take the following sentence: “Whether you admire them or not, Accessible Houses can be a actual able absolute acreage sales tool.”

I looked up the original article and found that it said: “Whether you adore them or not, Open Houses can be a very effective real estate sales tool.”

The words “real estate” and “Open House” have specific meanings in our culture – we all know what they mean. But when “absolute acreage” is substituted for “real estate” it not only takes on a different meaning, it leaves us thinking “What in the heck is absolute acreage?”

On the other hand, “accessible house” could have a couple of different meanings – just not the same meaning as “Open house.”

As for “actual able,” I doubt if I’d have figured out that it meant “effective” if I had not gone in search of the original article.

In this same article, spinning changed the Law of Attraction to the Law of Allure. The difference is subtle, just as it is with eager and anxious, but there is a difference.

Adding content to a website is a good idea. It adds search engine optimization and gives site visitors more reasons to stay longer. And borrowing articles from a site such as EzineArticles.com is a perfectly acceptable way to do it.

Your website and your articles really are your “face to the world,” and you will be judged by them. So don’t choose an article and ask software to spin it into 10 more articles. The results are often such that you’ll present the face of an illiterate, or a “goof.”

At best, they’ll show that you’re more interested in appealing to search engines than humans – and what is the point of attracting visitors if they’ll see what you wrote and hurry to leave?

My opinion: when content is the result of article spinning, the best idea would be to delete it.

Be careful! If you do it, read every article before you submit it, and make necessary changes. Otherwise you could end up looking foolish.

You probably know that I write article for EzineArticles.com. I also have Google Alerts set so that I (sometimes) get notice when someone posts one of them. What I wish is that if someone takes an article and runs it through that software they would remove my name.

This rant is because of one of those posts I saw this morning. It was an old article entitled “In the business world, do nice guys finish last?”

When I followed the Google alert this morning to see who had posted it, I was once again shocked by finding an article that for the most part made no sense.

For instance, this sentence:

I read a great report about malpractice suits that said doctors who are nice don’t get sued.

Turned into this:

I read a report on abuse suits, said that doctors who are not nice to be mentioned.

And this sentence:

That’s where you get the word of mouth advertising that money can’t buy.

Turned into:

It is here that the word of mouth that the money buy.I ‘m sure you can get very nice, but now worry later “must be set.”

Huh??

When you take articles from a site like EzineArticles, you promise to use the article as it was written, and to include the author’s resource box. But more and more often now I’m finding articles that have been altered with the resource box left in place. As you can guess, it bothers me a lot to have my name attached to gibberish, but as far as I can see, there’s not much any of us can do about it.

Anyway… be careful. Don’t ask some software to do your work for you, even if it does mean that you can be posted on 100 article sites in the time it takes to post to just one. Filling your blog or your website with bad writing just to add content makes no sense whatsoever. And sending those articles out under your own name in order build SEO with  links back to your site isn’t smart either.

More content is good – but only if it’s good content.

Those articles get posted on on-line sites, along with a resource box to send people back to our websites for more information. The links add “Google Juice” to our sites while showing our prospective clients that we have something worthwhile to offer.

It’s important that the articles represent you well, because if they don’t, no one will follow the links. Resist the urge to buy those $5 articles you find on line and use them just to improve your search engine optimization.

Instead, write something helpful for your customers and would-be customers. Give them information they’ll be glad to have. If you absolutely can’t write well, get someone else to do it for you.

But what about duplicate content?

I’ve been reading a lot about that lately, and it’s the reason why I’ve always concentrated my efforts toward just one site: EzineArticles.com. But now I’m reading that it doesn’t really matter. The place where duplicate content counts against you is on your own site.

I don’t really understand why anyone would post two pages just alike on their own site, unless perhaps it was because they’re testing different lead generation.

One thing that is important, if you’re using EzineArticles, is that the content on your site and the duplicate content you submit for an article both have the same author name. They’ll reject any article that looks like it was “stolen” from someone else. So if your site doesn’t show your name, they’ll reject the article. But – your site should show your name, anyway.

If you’re ashamed of what you’re offering, you shouldn’t be offering it.

I did have a frustrating experience this week with EzineArticles – I copied an article from an old blog post, added to it a bit, and posted it. And it was rejected. I kept getting a message that there was an imbedded HTML tag. But I sure couldn’t see one.

I cut the whole article out, put it back on a word doc, checked it thoroughly for the 10th time, and re-posted it. Same thing happened. Finally, someone from Ezine told me to turn off the WYSWYG function and check.

Sure enough, at the end of the article I found several lines of “gobbledy-gook” coding.

In my original post a book title had been a link. When I changed the article to add to the article site I had deleted that link and re-typed the book title, but for some reason, part of the code attached to the link stayed behind.

So, if you get a strange rejection message, turn off the WYSWYG function and see if there’s something hiding in your copy.

First, you have to come up with a title that someone searching will find. In other words, use the keywords that match the content of your article. It pays to do a little research before you choose those keywords.

Remember, you probably don’t want ones that are THE most sought-after on the internet. Go for some long-tail keywords that fewer people are searching for so that your article won’t just be lost in a vast sea. Trying to attract everyone could result in attracting no one.

Next, you have to write an article that shows your expertise in your chosen niche. Picking up someone else’s article and putting it through one of those article-altering software programs won’t do it! Neither will purchasing $5 articles from some PLR site.

Write something original. You can take ideas from other articles or blogs, but put your own twist on them. Give readers the value of your experience on the subject.

Make the information useful so that others reading it will want to pick it up to add to their own sites. Every time this happens you get an extra link back to your own site – a very good thing for search engine optimization.

Which brings me to the resource box. Take care when you write it, because it is your advertisement at the end of each article. Include a link back to your site and a teaser to lure people over to learn more.

I am constantly amazed by the number of articles I see with a useless resource box. Many say nothing more than “Mary Jones is a prolific writer and the mother of three.” So… so what?

Think about why someone should come and visit your site – what value they’ll recieve when they get there – then tell them.

Good articles will bring traffic to your website – and that’s what you need if you want to build your business on line.