Length of an article?

How long should an article be in length to be suitable to submit to article directories?

 

350-500 words is what i normally do..If you have less than 250 some directories don't accept and it becomes boring for visitors to read more than 500 words..

 

The length of article should justify the purpose of it, however I think 500 word should be max in length.

 

Yea thanks for the responses I had a few that were under 300 words thought they may be too short

 

i feel ideally the length should be around 400 as thats not too short n not too long and at the same time, gives justifiable space to the writers to express his thoughts...

 

I saw many articles in ezine recently and most of them were between 350-400 words. I think thats a pretty ideal word count as you write just to the point and the article finishes quickly enough, sometimes leaving you wanting to read more.

 

Read the directory's TOS, they'll tell you.

For example, EzineArticles says your content must be between 250 and 5,000 words with the "ideal article" falling between 400 and 750 words.

 

I'd say any good article would be one that is over 500 words, but it does depend on the topic though in my opinion.

 

I think it's definitely best to see what the directory recommends, but in my personal opinion, for most topics between 300-500 words is best. People don't seem to want to read any more than that.

I've also found, that if the article stretches to more than 500 (for some topics) if you really evaluate the article you'll see you may be able to turn it into two seperate pieces.

 

I feel comfortable writing articles between 250 and 350 word count, unless I'm passionate or knowledgeable in a topic that makes me go beyond

 

Articles should be as long as needed to entertain a reader. The problem with web publishing goes beyond reader ability to stay focused...it lies more in writers and editors who fail to keep to standards. I have been writing professionally both online and offline for more than 20 years and it is simply impossible to do a credible job with just about any topic when you are limited to 500 to 1000 words. And those writing 250-400 words? Those are merely summaries, not articles.

 

maximum 500 words.

 

I do understand your point, but Market Juction, who is also a pro, pointed me to a fact that made me reconsider my point of view after saying a few days back in other similar thread that shorter than 200 is just a summary or description.

He said that ewspapers articles are often even below 250 words and not necessarily summaries, but how skilled is a writer to get a full story in short, and I found it's truth after reading some articles from prestious journalists at the NY Times website.

 

I think the word "articles" is defined differently online then. In pure journalistic terms an article is something that adequately, thoroughly and completely covers a topic answering the who, what, why, when and where. I don't find much on the NYT that is fewer than 1000 words, let alone 250.

The original question stated how long articles should be for an articles website. These sites tend to be web-only venues, usually of spurious value to readers, benefitting marketing and link junkies at best. In that case, I suppose the majority is right: the shorter the better.

 

The word "article" isn't different online.

As for the NYT, their online stuff is usually the larger items and not the best stuff (they're not in the business of giving away their content for free). Subscribe and read the actual paper and you'll find plenty of articles of varied length.

Seriously, many on this forum over-think things.

 

Article or summary - what you submit to ezinearticles or the like should be a draw for readers. They should finish that article and want more. If you put everything you have into a single article, why should they follow your profile link looking for what else you have to say on the particular topic?

That being said, throw a short article/summary up for submissions (300-400 words) and then spend the bulk of your time crafting your best material for the website you're using that submission to market.

Rebecca

 

It really isn't the length that is important, rather it's the quality and overall almost any 450-500 words quality focused article should be approved accordingly by editors of any good directory.

 

A typical articles should be atleast 250 - 500 words. For example, ezinearticles.com accepts atleast 250 words while others accepts 400 words.. Check their guidelines first before submitting.

 

It differs from a directory to directory but yes, the guideline is often 250 to 500 words.

The most important issue in my opinion is, however, the legibility of an article. If you submit a short 250 word article without line breaks it may be much harder to read than a long but well structured article.

Check with the guidelines if you are allowed to use some basic HTML tags to emphasize (bold, italic, unsorted lists etc) certain parts to allow for easier scanning. And that's what the surfers do - they don't read they scan. (Bloody robots )

 

To my way of thinking, 300 words is a blog entry and 500 (approx.) is an article.