: Quick Tips: Titles, opening paragraphs, closing paragraphs >
Today I'd like to publish a few quick tips instead of one long post. Let me know if you would like me to make this a weekly thing.Formatting the date.
Sometimes I come across blogs or forums that list dates in a numerical format, e.g. 05/02/08.I'm British, so I read that date as 5th February 2008. However, an American would read it as 2nd May 2008.
I think that for an English language blog, you should write the date out in full - e.g. February 5th, 2008. This reduces confusion for your readers, who may be from all over the world. That's what you expect with the web!
With any luck, your blogging system or website system should allow you some flexibility with date formatting. I'd suggest opting for something other than the rather confusing numerical date formats.
Using images in your posts.
I've seen a lot of blogs that use images on a regular basis. bloggernoob.com and From Ink to Ether are two good examples of this.Some other blogs recommend using images but they do not always follow their own advice.
It's ideal if your image is relevant to the post, but it doesn't have to be - a good image can be better than what a certain friend refers to as a "wall of text".
Paragraph length.
Try to avoid writing long paragraphs of text. It can make your posts very difficult to follow.Also, keep your sentences short and to the point. There's no point rambling on and on - people just aren't going to read it.
What do you think?
This is very much an experimental post. I don't always want to write very long posts, and perhaps you don't always want to read long posts. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!Comments
I write long paragraphs but I break them up with pictures and spaces- I think this keeps a reader a little more interested. Personally, the size of the post doesn't matter to me-if the title or first sentence doesn't grab my attention, then I don't read. Most Americans read dates as 2/5/2008,or 02-05-08 or February 5, 2008.
LOVE the brief tips. Easy to follow and great advice.
I have a question for you re paragraphs. I like short paragraphs and often like to just have 1 line of sentence broken up by a space above and below but I'm having trouble with the formatting in wordpress. When I hit save it's taking out the spacings surrounding the text. Any ideas on how I overcome this?
If you want to see what I mean, my latest post at http://www.lighteningonline.com may highlight the problem. There used to be a lot more spacing in the formatting but every time I hit save or publish it takes them out. I've managed to at least force a couple of paragraphs to the next line by adding <div> tags but can't work out why it is doing this or how to overcome it properly. It's causing me much frustration!!!!
Thanks for the comments. :)
Cellobella - I agree unless the sentences are quite short. I'd rather have short paragraphs than long ones, but one line paragraphs are a bit too short for me. I did a few of those in this post and I thought about changing them, but didn't because I didn't do it for every paragraph.
Beth - I agree with keeping people interested. Also, a picture stands out far more than text does when you first view a page - i.e. before you get down to actually reading it. On the subject of dates, remember that not everyone is American. That's why I made a point to say that I'm British and the American date format is not the one that I'm familiar with. :)
Lightening - Glad you like the tips. As for WordPress, I'm not a WordPress user so I don't have any explanation as to why this is happening. Have you tried in a different browser? If you find it happens in one browser but not another, then that might be worth reporting to WordPress. If you're using a plugin to post content (e.g. a WYSIWYG editor that isn't installed in WordPress by default) then you may need to report the issue to the plugin writer.
I have always loved the look in hand written script the way the british written date looks with the day month year..it looks classy and it is something I picked up actually down in New Orleans many years ago. Where? can't remember!
In regards to the post from Lightening, sometimes I ran across that with wordpress when I would cut and paste out of word.
My issue is getting only snippets to appear in wordpress, another learning lesson.
Thanks for the post, bringing up the date. I really do think that it appears the most appealing !
Hi skleiner, thanks for the comment. Glad I brought up the date.
Come to think of it, Authority Blogger Forum is a good place to ask about WordPress, although I can't guarantee that they will have an answer. Asking WordPress directly would be the best route, but Authority Blogger Forum is worth checking out for other reasons too. I'll be writing more about it in a future post. :)
Thanks for your thoughts. I thought it might be a copy and pasting issue but it seems to be happening with posts written directly into the wordpress compose screen as well.
I might try that forum you suggested. Thanks again.
No worries Lightening, hope you find the answer you need.
Hi Ben,
I totally agree. I find I scroll through long dense posts without reading them at all - especially in my reader.
I think bloggers should aim for one sentence per par - just like a news script.
Much easier to scan and read.
:)
CB