A question anybody who puts out a newsletter should ask. Most folks in business receive enough e-mail without adding more to the in box unless it’s something that offers value. To make sure your newsletter doesn’t fall into the “Nuisance” category, you need to follow a few simple guidelines.

Make sure the focus of your articles is on things that actually affect your readers. Better yet, offer a solution to a problem they might encounter. For example, the article on Spell Check in this newsletter. While it may not be on the top 10 list of problems you might run into, it’s a nice-to-know feature that will help.

Do not oversell or even try to sell your services with your newsletter. The idea of the newsletter is to inform. By offering helpful advice and information, you are subtly selling your products or services by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise.

Keep it brief. As stated earlier, people have a limited time and attention span for most e-mail newsletters. Do not overwhelm them with 2000-word articles. Try to keep it under 500, even better if it’s between 100 and 300 words.

The death sentence to any e-mail newsletter is scrolling. So make sure to post longer articles you do offer on your Web site or blog with a link from the e-newsletter.

Always give readers the choice of opting out. You never want to be associated with spam. Unless you give readers the choice of receiving your newsletter, you will be.

Finally, don’t be offended if not everybody reads the articles in your newsletter. Ideally, that would be the case, but it’s not critical to the success of your newsletter. Just by publishing your newsletter, you’re putting your product or service to the front of the brain of your readers, even if that puts you in the “Deleted” folder.

Have you ever used the same letter for more than one purpose? Of course! It’s silly not to use a good letter for a number of different purposes–as long as its tailored appropriately to the audience and you remember to proofread and spell check. Yet the spell check in your word processing program is exactly where this strategy can run afoul.

Spell check in Word doesn’t like to re-check words and rules it’s already checked. So when you re-use letters, it will only check what you’ve changed. So while you should always proofread whatever you send out, a fresh spell check is also a very good idea.

The spell check for both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect includes an “Options” button, which contains a “Re-check document” option. By clicking on “Re-check document,” Spell Check treats your document as a new piece, which in your case is true.

So while you should always proof any piece before it goes out, a fresh spell check from scratch is just a good rule of thumb. You’d be surprised how many mistakes a fresh spell check, even after proofreading, can red flag.

“A picture is worth a 1,000 words.” If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it 1,000 times. For those of us who write for a living, pictures don’t replace the words we write but give the words we do write a chance to sink in. How?

Pictures, images, even some of the very words we write used as pull-quotes improve readability. Instead of looking at a page entirely of text, the reader can pause a second to take in the picture or image. This lends favorably to the reader actually retaining something about what the written piece is about.

With people skimming through e-mails, newsletters, and articles at breakneck speed, adding images to a piece may not tell the entire story—but it will get the reader to slow down and maybe stay a short while, rather than clicking.