Try as we might to deny it, how you look to the world is often more significant than the message you wish to communicate. Squeal about how unfair that is as much you like, it won’t change the facts.   Of course many writers are solitary slipper wearing creatures who wish the world would take them at their words, without any need to show their face.

While it is possible to sell your words without you ever needing to be seen, you still need to make some effort at presentation in order to be accepted. Not many writers are likely to be noticed if they scrawl their words like a shopping list on a crumpled brown paper bag, lacking structure, grammar and maybe even purpose.

The whole idea of writing to be published is that your words have some intrinsic value, that the way you combine  them is more valuable than some grouping of words produced by random hacking at the keyboard. Lets take a look at a few key elements of presentation:

Presentation Structure: Do your words have value? Are they spelt correctly? Are they used correctly? Have you used the right amount? Not enough words and your whole structure might collapse. Too many and you have overcapitalised, wasted words add no value. Does your piece have a coherence? A beginning a middle and an end that all pull in the same direction?

Presentation Form: Is your work legible and readable? Full stops in place?  Capital letters? Does it fit the pages without seeming either lonely or constrained? Is the font appropriate for the audience? The field of typography is a huge subset of graphic design. However for writers, there are only a few fonts and rules to worry about. How your output looks, either on the page or on screen can be enormously influenced by your font choices.

Presentation Purpose: Possibly the most important aspect of all. Why did you write this? If there is no evidence of reason in your writing then it is unlikely anyone will find value in it. Without value there will be no acceptance.

How you present your work has a significant bearing on how it will be received. Don’t make the customer work, make it easy to consume and understand. Make sure your writing flows by reading it aloud. If you stumble over a sentence or a phrase, it probably needs revision. This is also a great way to pick up typos and punctuation errors.