Greetings

Hello, many of us here are new to steemit and also Nigerian college students. I was a "fresher" on steemit a few months ago, and I remember having so many questions, especially how to make my posts look professional, and easy on the eye. Even to the extent of teaching myself graphic designs so as to make enticing cover photos. Another issue was typographical and grammar issues, mistakes I might easily miss while writing. I was lucky to have @whitestallion close to me to put me through on a lot. Some of us do not have this luxury, and this came to my attention a lot reviewing assignments from the Steemit Crypto Academy.

Today I'll walk us through basic markups and edits. There are several very important things in a post, that makes it look very professional, organised and legible.

Cover Images

Automatically, the first picture(if any) becomes becomes the cover photo, and its nice when you design it yourself and add some signature on it. To do this, I use Canva to edit. You can learn on youtube how to use their wonderful templates. Give your posts that signature touch.

Headers and General Writing

Some of us have found it hard to make our posts look organized by demarcating our sub-topics with headers, or more specifically, making the headers bolder and bigger.

• First, to edit texts to bold or italics, all younneed do is add ( * ) before and after the text for italics, two ( ** ) for bold and three ( *** ) for both.

• Then to make headers, at the beginning of a new line, use hash (#) to start the line, give space and type the header. To make a smaller header, add another hash (##), the more you add, the smaller the header.

• Quoting is another area you can make look unique. Just add this (>) to the beginning of the line and everything will appear like a quote. at the end of the quote, you can use (~) to indicate your source

• To center text, Add the center markup illustrated below.

• If you like justified texts, i.e texts that touch each edge, making it look organised, use the text justify markup, also illustrated below.

how to write

results

Line dividers

These are image files of lines, they could be simple colours or complex designs. I used one blow this paragraph. You can download these lines or ask fellow steemians for some. If you notice I use these lines to divide my post into sections. They are not really necessary, but if you want to, it's cool.

PLAGIARISM!

Steemit rewards are based on proof-of-brain (PoB). Write from your brain. This does not mean you cannot outsource, research, no. You can outsource and learn, then write, no one is a bank of knowledge, but do not edit someone's work and use as yours, or even in some cases, your fellow steemian. That is wicked. If you have to copy, ensure to quote the source, even add a link if available. Steemit is very devoted to ending plagiarism and so many accounts like @endingplagiarism, professor@sapwood and even communities are devoted to this cause. @steemcurator01 also downvotes plagiarists, and you do not want this to happen to you.

There are no Many types of plagiarism

Copy and Paste

Some students and steemians do this, and end up getting blacklisted and downvoted.

Spinning

This is using a tool, or manually changing a few words in a publication, then posting it on steemit as yours. You will be caught and punished.

Images

Some Images are copyright and should not be used, even if you cite the source. How to know copyright images? Simply change your Google image settings to creative common licenses, as shown below, and you can use those images, and include their links.

1. Click on tools
2. Select Usage rights
3. Use Creative Common License
   

Originality

Originality Originality Originality😫😫😫 couple this with consistency and creativity and the sky is not even close to your limit. There is this sense of pride in knowing, this is me, I did this, I made my success possible. The conscience and the brain feels elated, and you also improve tremendously, trust me. You can go to the beginning of my posts and see the changes overtime. Be original, be consistent, be creative, and steemit will reward you.

Conclusion

I hope we have all learnt things we have been needing. If there are things I missed and you need to know, you can comment it and hopefully if time permits, I get to it. I did this because I want the students in the academy and all bloggers on steemit to have the tools needed to modify their publications and add that professional touch to it.

Thanks for Reading.

CC:
@whitestallion