Eep! My source is from a book, not the Web!

One of my students asked about what to do if you find a source at the library but not online. First of all, go you for researching at the library! Now. As Prof. Blaine said, the point is that we would be able to find your source if need be, or if we wanted to find more information from your source. In that case, use MLA style for sourcing your...

Blog language: Style

We won’t be teaching you Associated Press style in this course, though recommend that you read a newspaper regularly, online or in print, to become familiar with straight-forward, mainstream journalism style. Our goal is that you stay consistent. If you write 28 instead of twenty-eight*, for example, maintain that throughout your blog. Also, grammar counts. One of Ed Madison’s favorite sites is...

Blog language: Tone

A lot of blogs are informally written, which makes them what they are — smart, snarky and a great read. (Perezhilton and Wonkette come to mind.) But for this course, we’re asking you to err toward formal language. As every grizzled newspaper editor tells his cub reporters, learn the basics first, then break the rules. We may not be old or grizzled, but we’ll carry on tradition and impart that...

A note on editing your blog

We’ve told you not to delete your posts, for reasons of intellectual honesty, but also because we want to track your progress and development through this course. That said, if you notice a typo or grammatical error, it’s OK to fix those without noting the changes. If you make bigger changes, however, note them at the bottom of your blog with an asterisk (*). We love to see that you’re...

Writing a Blog Post: Your Checklist

Creating a blog post is really more than just writing good content. The following checklist can help you ensure that your post is readable, findable and shareable. Do you have a compelling headline? There’s some dos and don’ts. Does your post have good structure & provide useful information? Plenty of folks have written posts on how to write posts. Take a look around. Does your post...