What is an Article?

Written words organized around a subject. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But an article is so much more. The word “article” covers an enormous range of writing. A 300-word news story or a 10,000-word scientific review. A magazine feature to a product comparison for a company website. An insightful commentary on a controversial topic or a complete guide to the ins and outs of something rather mundane. An article is a world.

To oversimplify, an article is a piece of nonfiction writing focused on a particular subject. The word doesn’t specify any rigid format. Other forms of content might have strict usage guidelines.

A blog post should be conversational, first-person, and short, preferably. A news piece must be neutral and state facts without decorating them in chronological order. A technical guide must explain certain things before it even gets to the point.

But an article?

Can be conversational and third-person, or first-person and long-form. Can be neutral, formal, semi-formal, or even casual in tone. It can break narrative, jump from thought to thought, or be very ordered instead. It might not explain something at the beginning and start with a hook or story, then move on to the actual matter to better arrange the flow and comprehension for the reader.

It can inform, explain, analyze, persuade, investigate, educate, entertain, or accomplish multiple of these at once. As such, there’s no universal article length, structure, tone, or subject matter.

You can’t really write a whitepaper on speakers (that could be a product review instead). You can’t have a press release about a DIY experience (that’s for blogs). But an article can be anything. Specifically, a website or SEO article (not a newspaper article).

What Makes Something an Article?

Four key components:

A defined subject (it can’t be vague like some blog posts can be, and must ascertain what’s going to happen in the body quickly).
An intended reader (good articles are only written based on a target reader).
A purpose (it must do something, such as help the reader learn something new that they didn’t know before).
And an organized body of information that makes reading and skimming both pleasant.

Simply putting random information into paragraphs doesn’t necessarily produce a good article. The reader’s requirement is important. And so is attention to detail in terms of determining the ideal flow of information. A central angle or idea must be explored in a way that can be digested easily without wasting people’s time. And that’s easier said than done!

Now, just having a subject doesn’t mean you have an article. This page has a subject. It is educating you about what an article is. But it’s not an article on its own. The subject is too broad. An article, more than having a subject, needs to actually have to say something about that subject. That’s the #1 distinction between everyday content and a polished article.

Structure, coherence, relevance, and actual completeness, as in satisfying a reader’s intent; these are all critical aspects of writing a good article. But getting into each of these will take individual articles or guides! So, let’s skip that for now and move on to our next subject: an article can be fluid.

But fluid? How?

Well, articles can be highly factual, for example. Based on peer-reviewed scientific research, attempting to distill science jargon into everyday words. Or, they can be argumentative. Maybe narrative. Instructional. Analytical. Critical. Or maybe even promotional. Even the tone can differ a lot. An article you write can be extremely formal because that’s what aligns with the objective or reader’s intent. On the other hand, another article can be very conversational, in order to build understanding with the reader to better solve their problem.

Article vs. Blog Post: What’s the Difference?

This is the big one, isn’t it? Time and again, writers and readers would argue whether something is an article or a blog. Some pieces of content might sound like either! Well, though there’s no exact formula to tell them apart, articles are generally a superior form of writing by design. And there are a few signs you can spot all too well (considering the article is well-written, and not actually written like a casual blog entry).

Blogs and traditional articles are historically different. Articles covered the same variety we just discussed, while blogs originally tended to be personal, chronological, and informally published snippets. That also made blog posts short, which is still a modern idea.
Over time, blog publishing became platform-based and not a distinct form of writing. Today, a company blog can contain articles that are essentially indistinguishable from articles on an online publication. But they’re just using the word wrong. They’re using their website’s “blog” section to dump in-depth articles, how-tos, guides, product explainers, specs, tutorials, this vs. that, and even industry news.
Today, the term “blog post” describes the publishing context rather than a specific writing format, more often than not.

Articles vs. Other Forms of Content

Essays, reports, whitepapers, case studies, press releases, landing pages, newsletters, social media posts, academic papers, stories, news stories/journalism, corporate website copy, etc., it’s all different from a typical article. They are all narrow-focused.

For example, landing pages need to convert. They’d rather rely on super-short, tight, and information-dense pieces of text to manipulate the reader’s attention than think about completeness, satisfying the reader’s original query, and offering a well-structured flow of information.

The difference? Purpose.

All those other forms of content have a specific purpose. Deviate, and your client/company will fire you. An article, on the other hand, is quite flexible in this regard. There are many ways to tackle the same subject. It’s really just about working very hard on making a complete article so that the reader leaves with something more than what they already knew when they read its first word.

That being said, rigid definitions aren’t always 100% perfect. The same information can be turned into several different forms of content with careful planning and good writing. Also, different formats often overlap and categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Someone could very well write a landing page that’s more of an article. It’s entirely possible.

But there is a key idea that almost all good articles hold. An article is generally more focused on communicating a subject to a reader than selling a product, service, or idea directly (selling not in the commercial sense; even putting up news stories as quickly as possible is a way of selling the idea of being a good news outlet).

All that being said, we must also remember that some pieces of content can reasonably be described using more than one label. Because, after all, these are all labels.

I’d argue, for example, that a product review is a very unique type of content format. You can’t just bundle it into one of the other more common formats. Whereas general-purpose articles or website blog entries don’t really care about how much non-text, visual signaling there is, a product review must be very visual. But a lot of product reviews are also articles. Another person might argue something else is also a label, let’s say an “infographic.” But an infographic can also be a listicle or a “best of” type of content at the same time. And even among the “big ones,” as in content formats all of us agree are most certainly distinct types/formats of content (e.g., a report, a press release, and a blog post), we might have some pieces that can have more than one format.

Types of Articles

You can cut this one in many ways. By purpose, by intent, by their design or structure, by their target audience, or even by the type of clients who order them! There’s no universally accepted taxonomy of article types. It all depends on the publication context, purpose, and format in many cases (format means the literal formatting of the piece, not to be confused with the content “type”). The same subject can be covered as a news article, guide, opinion article, comparison, interview, etc.

One of the simpler variations to categorize all of article writing is to use these types:

News and Journalism Articles

A news article can be something as short and simple as a series of factual statements. What happened, where, why, how. Maybe some historical/background or surrounding context and a few quotes from notable people. Or, it can be a thorough discussion of many reports, facts, sources, attributions, and so on. But regardless of the depth or range, two factors distinguish news/journalistic articles from the rest:

There’s a sense of urgency in the matter, or at least timeliness is considered one of the more important metrics, to the point where news stories might simply get discarded if they take too long from draft to live.
And there’s a sense of (for lack of a better term and at the risk of being redundant) newsworthiness. Not just about anything can go. If your story is thin, you’d feel wrong in publishing it.

Some other formats or sub-formats also fit these two metrics, but aren’t exactly news/journalism articles, such as analysis, commentary, features, and investigative journalism.

Journalistic and news articles differ from ordinary web content. And within journalism, there are several different article formats to care about. But we’re going to keep it short and move on to the next category.

Magazine and Feature Articles

This is my second favorite type. Probably because this is what I started with. I even created many “e-magazines” on various topics back in the day when creating “money sites” was all the rage. Basically, magazine writing, and no, it doesn’t have to be an article in a physical magazine you can hold, differs from a straightforward reporting of facts. These need to have long features, elaborate profiles, at least some human-interest stories or examples, and even long-form discussions from time to time.

Qualities that set these apart are:

There’s often a narrative structure in these articles.
It’s preferred to spend some time setting up a scene to make these flow better for the reader.
Interviews are often part of these things, or at least quotes from prominent people.
Storytelling is critical, or you lose readers.
The text often has character and personality. A unique flavor that only the particular writer can bring about.
Sometimes, magazine/feature articles can be heavily researched without being academic, which is really neat if you think about it. The scientist must spend all that research effort to publish an academic paper. A magazine or feature writer wants to spend all that research effort because it makes the text more juicy to read.

Modern digital publications have definitely blurred the line between magazine and web articles, but don’t think for once that these can’t be sniffed out very quickly once the reader begins reading.

Academic, Scientific, and Medical Articles

An “article” is also a formal publishing term in academia. It can be a research article, review article, case report, or some other scholarly format. These are clearly different from what we have discussed so far and what we’ll be discussing next. The key quality distinguishing these is:

Peer reviews, citations, explanations of methodology, evidence stated right up front, and language tailored toward a specific audience.

Just imagine an ordinary web article giving you the evidence and a hard result in the first paragraph, or heavily referencing other articles. Though these qualities do exist in some measure, such as the best practices of giving the reader what they came for quickly without beating around the bush and offering links to relevant sources, they’re never such a strong part of their identity. For research articles, that’s a good portion of what they must include.

Academic articles are written for a specialized group. Typical articles must aim to be understandable even by a layman or someone new to a field/domain/niche. Also, scientific rigor and simply writing an article about science are two very different things. And perhaps most importantly, these require an insanely huge amount of research, especially if the field is health/medical.

Professional and Industry Articles

Some articles are written for specialized professional audiences (without being research articles). These include legal, financial, technical, engineering, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, etc. This is the type where expertise and audience knowledge (like at which level your target reader is within the domain) can dramatically change how an article is laid out and written.

Targets a specific group of professional people with some level of pre-existing knowledge.
Often uses technical jargon, complex terminology, industry acronyms, etc., almost freely.
Technical accuracy is prized above all, which stems directly from expertise in the domain.

A truly expert article is very different from an article loaded with industry keywords. Compared to a lower form of articles or, say, blog posts, a good technical article can dramatically change the amount of knowledge you have after reading it. I say change and not increase because some technical articles can very well put you on the right course after having years of bad information about something, so maybe you don’t learn much new, but your knowledge becomes more accurate and true.

Business and B2B Articles

Businesses (their websites, actually) publish articles for educating users or customers, building authority, generating leads, offering customer support, commenting on the industry at large, proving thought leadership, etc. These are all business-oriented goals and must help the business in one way or another.

With the help of excellent business articles, any business can improve the buying cycles of their customers. And contrary to popular belief, they’re not always promotional. A good B2B article can be extremely good to read, very educational, and/or highly specialized, without trying to sell you anything at all.

On the other hand, poorly written business articles do nothing at all. These are usually regurgitation of what’s already out there. No original perspective, no true show of experience or expertise, no real business knowledge, no practical insight for the reader. Needless to say, this is utter trash. B2B writing is hard.

This category is where I’d also put executive and founder ghostwriting (someone else writing on behalf of a founder or executive without revealing the same).

Online Articles and Content Marketing

A lot of people think of this category when they hear the word content or article writing. In truth, it’s a very special type of writing. It’s truly remarkable just how much the internet changed what people mean by an article.

In the years long gone, an article was just someone arguing in a newspaper or writing about vague, controversial, promotional, or abstract pieces in magazines. Today, it covers what goes on corporate websites, digital publications, blogs, content hubs, media sites, and online magazines.

Content marketing is a professional discipline. A content marketing article’s job is to get more eyeballs for something else, like a product or service, rather than itself. It’s a promotional tool by all means. Content marketing itself is a larger domain, and articles written for it are but a small part of the bigger picture. These articles are markedly unique. More than having readers come and read them, they’d like readers to become customers or leads of something else.

More often than not, online articles need to satisfy several audiences simultaneously: readers, businesses, and search engines, for example. The “online article” is also quite a generic label with a huge variety under it.

SEO Articles

Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing, but the larger domain of SEO articles remains alive. A lot goes into a good SEO article, but its key characteristics include at least some of these:

Specific keywords a website/business wishes to rank on search engines for.
Deliberately identifying search intent and then figuring out how best to satisfy it with an article.
Having topical relevance, and not writing anything unrelated to the core niche.
Keywords, internal linking, a very detailed structure with multiple levels of headings, etc.

As websites amped up hiring content writers to push their pages higher in search results, search engines themselves started to become more intelligent in distinguishing between two very different things: writing for search engines vs. writing content that happens to perform well in search.

There’s also a heavy overlap between SEO articles and guides, explainers, comparisons, reviews, and many other formats. Low-quality SEO content might have given this category a bad name, but this discipline also requires a lot of research and systemic exploration to be considered good.

But at the end of the day, I’d put this category in the “search consideration” basket rather than an actual, distinct literary format. Even a product review can be an SEO article sometimes, for example.

Opinion, Analysis, and Thought Leadership Articles

And my favorite of the lot. An opinion is the opposite of reporting. If you don’t have an opinion on something, likely something you can defend strongly, you simply can’t write a good one. Analysis is the interpretation and contextualization of something, not a catalog of facts. And thought leadership is expertise combined with an original perspective.

I have bundled all these together because they are often interchangeable. An opinion often leads to a thought leadership article. A thought leadership article can sometimes just be a collection of expert analyses.

These are likely to be first-person and need to present an actual point of view rather than generic insights which are just reported facts. Evidence, experience, argument, and overall credibility are all a part of the picture here. And an opinion isn’t an isolated, abstract object. Sometimes, it’s as real as high-effort research.

How-To, Guide, FAQ, Comparison, and Other Formats

This format is a separate dimension, not a typical “article type.” Anything that fits these labels: how-to article, tutorial, guide, explainer, FAQ, listicle, comparison, X vs. Y, review, buying guide, roundup, interview, Q&A, case study, or is very data-driven, can fit this label.

Each sub-format is unique and extremely good in one aspect. A tutorial is a visual guide, for example, fit for several niches. In some other niches, tutorials might not work at all (let’s say there are no “steps” to take). Also, sometimes, a single article can combine several of these formats. And at other times, it’s also possible for the same subject to be approached as a guide, comparison, FAQ, or even an opinion article. The format must always follow the reader’s need.

Where Article Types Overlap

The idea that every article fits neatly in one box is not accurate. You could write a researched B2B SEO thought-leadership article, for example. Or a magazine-style healthcare article, a journalism-style investigative industry article, and so on. SEO, B2B, medical, thought leadership, long-form, etc., are just labels for the different dimensions of an article. They make up the article.

Based on the subject, audience, purpose, format, publication context, and methodology, you could end up writing a hybrid article that satisfies the criteria for multiple article formats.

What is a Good Article

Now, we come to the meat of the discussion. What is actually a “good” article? There are four ways to approach this question, and each will unlock new insights for you.

1. The Anatomy of a Good Article

First, you have to understand the anatomy of a good article. I’ll not be going to explain each and every aspect because, frankly, there’s no need to bombard you with descriptions of stuff you can look up easily or already know. The larger point here is what makes a good article, and we simply begin with the ideal anatomy.

The anatomy of a good article often includes a headline, a to-the-point introduction, a central idea, a particular structure that the reader can follow easily, and, of course, the various blocks: paragraphs, evidence, examples, quotes, conclusions, CTAs, FAQs, etc. Not all are needed in each article, of course.

Throughout all this, the writer must remember to care for transitions and logical progression. One thing leads to another. One idea feeds into another. One section explains something that’s important to understand the next.

Nothing in a good article’s anatomy should be there just to decorate or fill the space. If it can’t justify its existence, it should be removed.
Introductions should tell what the reader will expect.
If the article can get to the point, answer the question, satisfy the query, troubleshoot the problem, etc., sooner, then by all means, it should do that sooner. If you drag along, you’re doing it wrong.
A conclusion should actually conclude and not repeat the same stuff in a shorter section. It’s perfectly fine to not write conclusions when not needed.

2. What an Article is Supposed to Do

Why does an article exist? To deliver something to the reader. Information, understanding, answers, insight, perspective, practical usefulness, or maybe just entertainment.

The more you grow as an article writer, the more you begin to see the line separating “covering a topic in depth” and actually helping a potential reader. The headline makes a promise, making the reader expect something. As the writer, it’s your job to know that expectation. If not, reframe the headline to something you can imagine the reader expecting. Then, do your best in getting to the point quickly, section by section until you deliver on the promise.

The best way to understand this is YouTube videos. I’m sure all of us are aware of clickbait thumbnail texts/visuals. By the end, you realize that expectation was unfulfilled. The taste such content leaves is terrible. A lie, a misleading premise, an unfulfilled promise, an unreliable guide. All this makes you trust the channel less. Such content isn’t reliable in the long-run. The same applies to articles that don’t fulfill their promise, or take forever to do so.

An article that technically contains a lot of information can still fail. Every major editorial decision must be connected to the purpose of the article.

3. What Makes an Article Good for the Reader

Usefulness, clarity, accuracy, relevance, originality, depth, credibility, and readability. Of course, “good” depends partly on purpose and audience. An article can be good for one type of reader and bad for another. It could be good for one purpose and bad for another. For example, if your audience is the DIY amateur, then your practical, on-point explanations of essential equipment handling safety tips is warranted. But if an expert DIYer reads your stuff, they’d think you’re wasting a lot of their time repeating what they already know.

Know your audience and purpose to write better articles. That’s the only way to ensure, for a writer, to create something that the reader will actually find helpful or like.

A good news article isn’t judged by the same criteria as a good opinion piece. A good SEO article isn’t necessarily the same thing as a good magazine feature. And perhaps the most important of them all: originality doesn’t necessarily mean discovering brand-new facts.

Good articles often demonstrate the writer’s ability to do synthesis and interpretation, as well as offering examples and perspectives. All this can make an article original and vastly more useful for your reader.

4. Research, Expertise, and Evidence in Article Writing

Two extremes exist within each domain: lightly researched everyday articles and extremely research-heavy pieces. A lot of effort goes to move the needle toward the latter. Primary sources, secondary sources, expert interviews, studies, reports, data, and, of course, firsthand experience. Fact-checking and source quality also determine just how useful your article will end up being for the reader.

Sometimes, an article will need citations. Mostly, formal citations aren’t necessary to put a point across. This depends entirely on the purpose of the article. And when covering specialized topics, this becomes all the more important, alongside your responsibility to be a subject-matter expert.

Don’t add sources and reinforcement paragraphs just to have a pile of references. That is the type of research that degrades the article’s quality. Sometimes, less is more.

Article Writing Process

How are articles written? Generally, they follow this ladder:

Brief
Audience
Purpose
Topic
Angle
Research
Outline
Draft
Editing
Fact-checking
Optimization
Publication

Not every writer follows or needs to follow the exact same process in the exact same order. But some key considerations here:

Outline: You must spend a lot of time refining the outline. It directly impacts the article’s quality. It must match the purpose as closely as possible.
Revisions: For high-effort articles, treat revision as a repetitive part of the process, not a final touch.
Audience & Purpose: The same subject changes depending on who’s reading. Consumer, professional, executive, academic, technical, and general audiences are all different. Their reading level, terminology comprehension, pre-existing assumptions, expected depth, etc., all differ. Know your ideal reader to know how to write well.
Article Length: There’s simply no universal ideal article length. As long as you need! Short-form, medium-length, long-form, ultra-long, all types of articles exist. A subject might only require 500 words, another 2,000.

Top 5 Common Misconceptions About What an Article Is

“An article has to be a certain length.” Nope. The word count follows the subject and the reader’s needs.
“An article and a blog post are completely different things.” Sometimes, they can overlap. A blog post can be very close to an article. A casually written, low-effort article is better labeled a blog.
“Articles are only published in newspapers and magazines.” The definition of an article has changed considerably over the years with the growth of the internet.
“Every article needs a formal introduction and conclusion.” Some can begin with a hook or a story and end without a conclusion. Again, depends entirely on your audience and purpose.
“Longer articles are better.” Perhaps the biggest reason why the internet is full of filler.

An article is an extremely broad category and a lot goes into understanding it. Most notably, you must begin by first understanding its purpose, audience, context, format, and execution.