So far, I’ve been all about how to make your blog yours. I’ve stressed how important your voice is, and how your unique perspective make you indispensable.
Today, I need to fill you in on some “best practices”. These are things I think are massively important in a really tiny-detail kind of way. Please forgive my bluntness and take any possible offense knowing that I want the very absolute best for your blog.
Without further ado, PLEASE:
1. Don’t center your text. Left align. We read from left to right, and we all have since we learned how. People are more apt to stick with your words if it’s easy to read.
2. In a similar vein, use short paragraphs. Please. It’s hard to digest large blocks of text online–and it’s even worse to read a whole post with no paragraph breaks. 2-3 sentence paragraphs are ideal.
3. If you are writing much more than 1000 words, consider splitting it up into multiple posts (readers love a good series!).
4. Use a legible font. Don’t use a script font in the body of your post.
5. Don’t go wild with the bolding and the italics. Striking through and underlining, too. It can come across as gimmicky.
6. Dark type on a light background generally works best.
I know those “rules” can seem prescriptive, stifling, and maybe a bit judge-y. And, know this, you are completely free to write however and to whomever you please. But, just like there are best practices in book publishing and graphic design, there are things that work better in the online medium. These are just a few of the emerging standards for online publishing.