{!-- The style guide is meant to be more than a reference for practical advice, stylistic rules, and examples of good practice. I am also trying to present an argument for the importance of digital scholarship in the form of apps, dissertations, webapps, and blogs. While aimed mostly at writing, I think it will eventually expand to include videos, audio, presentation slides, and such (oh my goodness, academics seriously need help with their slides).
The hard part is finding the right balance of argument and advice. It will presented as a website with its design/layout as an example template. It’s intended to be extremely opinionated, but modular, so others can pick pieces they wish to use as a foundation for their own style guides. (This is sort of a precursor to a modular pattern library for assembling style guides I’ve been wanting to build for content strategy work.)
I haven’t put in many of the citations and annotations, but they’re currently in {curly brackets}. --}
The essence of writing for digital publishing is the same as writing for any other medium: Respect your audience.
Write for an intelligent and curious audience. Use serious academic prose. That you are not writing to be published in a journal or university press book does not mean you should not take care in choosing your words or approach your writing with the same rigor.
Serious academic writing is not be synonymous with dry, obtuse, or boring. Your prose need not be stuffy. If you write well, it can be lively and transformative. We are writing to be heard, so take your audience seriously as a full partner. Your audience’s engagement is as important as what you are trying to say.
This is an opinionated (and sometimes contradictory) guide for creating scholarly work for digital media. Though it is aimed at digital scholarship, many of its guidelines carry over to any professional endeavor. It offers guidance on (in order) writing style, serial writing, duties to the audience, typography & design, and extending the conversation.
Be precise in your prose, consistent in your style, and true to your own voice. Be clear and authoritative, but mindful of your inadequacies. Let your reader know when you are beyond your expertise. We will trust you more for your honesty and knowledge of your limits.
Writing is a conversation, delayed in time. Your tone and language should be lively. Write as you would speak to a peer; not as the monotonous professor, lecturing an auditorium of bored college students. Show your enthusiasm for your subject and your anger for injustices. But do so with clarity. Do not let emotion cloud the veracity of what you wish to say, let it enhance your convictions.
One great obstacle to steady vision is, of course, not weakness of sense, but strength of feeling. Artists, even more than most men are confronted by the perpetual dilemma — without passion they are likely to do little that is worth doing; yet with it they are constantly duped into doing the wrong thing. The only answer is to combine strong passions with strong control; but that proves not easy.
{Style, page 132}
Write with sincerity. Do not use too much hyperbole or irony, neither translates well in text. Write with authority but admit your ignorances. If you are unsure or you are outside your area of expertise, tell us. Uncertainty is not a vice, it is an avenue for future exploration. Write with conviction and eloquence, but be careful. We often produce beautiful aphorisms that describe our work in general but are problematic in detail.
Humor can help show the human side of you and your work, making people trust you more. Think back to who are considered the best writers of your field. It is not writers such as Kant whose opaque writing is cursed by even his most dedicated scholars. It is writers such as Hume, who had clever and brilliant ideas and also wrote of going to the pub and playing billiards.
When you let your love, frustration, and passion shine through, your audience will grow to love your work as you do.
“Formal” has a bad reputation among people who view the word too narrowly. It is often synonymous with dry, awkward, and stuffy like Mr. Darcy in the first half of Pride and Prejudice. But it needn’t be. You can be formal while still being friendly. Take your audience as full partners in the process of engaging your subject. Lead, do not lecture. Let them see your thought process rather than merely showing them your conclusion.
Deciding how formal your writing should be depends on the nature of your projects. If your writing is part of a dissertation or you are writing white papers for a think tank, you will want to keep your voice formal. If you are writing personally or part of a blog network rather than as a voice of an institution you can be less formal (depending on the publication’s style guide). If you are writing as part of an institution (such as a contributor to a corporate blog), your writing be somewhere in between (again, depending on your institution’s style guide).
People find ideas that are short and pithy more compelling than complex realities. This is a problem of the human condition that we can do very little to change. But it also gives us some direction for giving our writing more impact.
Summarize the salient points in short, memorable phrases. Use pull quotes and other typographic tools to highlight key phrases.{}
{See more in the Typography section}
I have spent years saying: ‘Your generalization is beautifully epigrammatic. I understand that you could not bear to leave it unwritten. But consider all these exceptions to it. You knew them. If you could not bear to kill your darling, why not introduce it with the words “It might be said that”, and then yourself point out the fatal objections? Then you could serve Beauty and Truth at once. {Style, page 131}
Take special care to emphasize the most important points you want readers to remember, but respect complexities. Do not compromise truth and accuracy for a clever aphorism. Beautiful, but deeply flawed generalizations can return to haunt us for a very long time, even when we spend subsequent pages and volumes detailing the complexities. Think of how many people have misunderstood Thomas Kuhn’s use of the word paradigm, or Wittgenstein’s reaction to the logical positivists who failed to grasp the meaning of the Tractatus. Sometimes, it is better to throw out a charmingly truism than trying to fix the fallout later.
If the meaning of what you wrote is unclear within its context. You have failed in your duty to your audience. Choose your words carefully. If the word you use has multiple connotations, be sure to specify exactly what you mean. Avoid cliches, ineffective phrases, and other overused rhetorical shortcuts.
Authentic and personal writing should not equal sloppy writing. Many authors have written deeply personal and elegant prose without resorting to colloquialism.
If you are writing timely materials (such as for a blog), pop culture references can be acceptable, as long as you do not use too many. Popular references and memes can be a good way to provide timely content and discussion, but are often shallow and imprecise. Do not allow your use of them sacrifice your depth of thought or cloud your broader work.
Be careful of what superlatives you use. Tax is not slavery, nor is minimum-wage shift work, and the United States government is not an oligarchy or an Orwellian police state. And while these tropes are over used by pundits and revolutionaries writing manifestos, they are unbecoming of a scholar producing a serious academic work.
This is not to say that our word usage should be archaically precise–the term decimate can be used for destroying large parts of a group, not just the destruction of 1/10th. But save “heroic,” “epic,“ “unforgivable,” and all the other superlatives for truly momentous occasions. Until then, you have other rhetorical tools of description that are engaging and fitting for the occasion, use them.
Creative and appealing headlines need not be hyperbolic. Though headlines have a duty to entice the audience to read our work, misuse through exaggeration dulls the impact of and devalues what we say. Avoid superlatives such as “perfect”, “worst”, and “-est” words such as “best” unless they describe reality. “The Best [x] of [y]” headlines should be left confined to MTV shows and end-of-year round-up lists.
We all do it. Stuck in a rut, we turn to familiar lines. But it is unoriginal, lazy, and ineffectual. The familiarity of cliches means they have lost their verve, their power dulled from overuse.
Not everything political controversy is a -gate, nor every digital community a -sphere or -verse. Though other writers (particularly journalists and pundits) may use the term you should not. They are unoriginal, uninspired, and lazy. Good writers need not fall back on them.
Jargon and obscure terminology alienate new readers. While your job as a writer is not to be palatable to all audiences, you need to be accessible to those who want or need to read your work. Unless it is a commonly-known abbreviation (such as NASA) or has been incorporated into the common vernacular (such as laser), avoid abbreviations when you can, and define them when you can’t. Field-specific terminology, which can often be a language unto itself, makes it hard for those who lack prior knowledge to learn what they need to know. You push away anyone who is not already acculturated into your field, reducing the diversity of knowledge and experiences you can draw from.
If you use a common word or term in specific ways, define it clearly. Even if something is obvious to you, obviousness is a matter of cultural indoctrination. Just as the working details of a flashlight would be incomprehensible to Aristotle, your specialized use of “responsibility” and “ethical theory” are to those who have not studied philosophy.
Sometimes abbreviation and field-specific terminology can not be avoided. Such as when not using them (particularly abbreviations) produce long ungainly sentences that are hard to follow (eg “The Department of Health and Human Service’s health exchange website as required by the Affordable Care Act…”). Many style guides tell you to define your terms (or fully spell out an abbreviation) the first time you use them. This is a good idea. But this is a case where digital media can also improve. Use non-invasive tools to clarify terms such as [side note annotations] or [tooltips] so your established readers are not unnecessarily distracted, but your new readers are properly informed.
Writing for the screen differs from print in two important ways: distractions are everywhere and people can move on with the flick of a finger. Cut out the fluff and remove redundancy (unless your prose requires it). Do not be overly verbose, write clearly and succinctly. Do not use five-syllable words where single-syllable words will do. These are important guidelines for any form of writing, but they are especially important for digital.
- hopefully
- interestingly
- in regards to
- on the flip side
- also
- seeing as
- being that
- first off, firstly
- personally
- obviously
- additionally
- due to
- however
- importantly
- thus/thusly
- that is
- often
- very unique
- done with
- totally
- etc.
- versus
- impacted
- interfaced
- multitude
- besides
- time period
- aspect
- quote
- though
- prime example
- in fact
- -ly words such as overly, essentially and overly
- therefore
- starts off
- around
- fair number
If you are writing in a language where there are critical differences between regional dialects, choose what is accepted in your community’s academic tradition unless you are making a specific cultural statement in your dialectical choice. But do so with care, do not needlessly embroil your linguistic choices in deeply-rooted political and cultural battles.
If you are choosing between commonly accepted choices (i.e. American and British English or Traditional and Simplified Chinese), pick one and stick to it.{}
{Authors writing in English may benefit from the American and British English section in The Economist Style Guide}
Use what is clear. In general, if you are writing an academic work (such as a dissertation), then follow the rules of your academic field. Below are a few rules that are optimized for contemporary writing and typographic practices. These may differ from your institution’s style guides, but will results in more readable text. Prefer these over other rules unless following them bars you from other considerations (such as your dissertation committee refusing to accept your work).
Yes, historical typesetters put more space between sentences than between words. That does not matter in the contemporary context. You are not the typesetter, your computer is. Let your fonts’ kerning tables—as set by their type designers—care for the optimal spacing. Spaces have semantic meaning—especially to developers—so stop sacrificing your content for amateur design considerations. As it is ill-advised for a typographer to second guess a surgeon’s cut, you should not second guess the typographers’ kerning.{}
{One Space Between Sentences by Typography for Lawyers}
Good typography requires using the proper glyph for the task. Learn how to use smart quotes
{!-- example --}
Unless a punctuation mark is part of the title or quotation, punctuation marks should be styled in the same way as the main text of its sentences. (This is the same rule as the 15th Chicago Manual of Style.) Punctuation marks are syntactical content, that is to say they clarify how the various semantic pieces fit together. Changing their style away from the main sentence means that they are a part of the piece that is being emphasized.
{!-- example --}
Each dash has a specific semantic meaning, be sure to use the correct one for each task:
- Hyphen (-): Used to break single words in to parts or join separate words.
Example: hand-lettered, space-based, commonly-used
-
En dash (–): Used to replace “to” and “and” Example: PDQ Bach’s tombstone is dated 1807–1742
-
Em dash (—): Used in place of a comma, emphasized parenthetical, or denoting an interruption in thought. Leave no spaces between the em dash and the words it separates. Example:
In general, use bold text (with <strong>) for passages that need strong emphasis. Use italics (with <em>) for passages that need a stress emphasis (such as things that would be pronounced differently).{}
{HTML gives us more semantic control over our use of font weight and styles. [See section on HTML for more]}
In English, the beginning of a sentence is capitalized, so are formal nouns and titles. Do not arbitrarily capitalize words for emphasis, that is what emphasis (with the element) is for [see the code section for more].
Only the headline of your article should be fully capitalized (e.g. The Fanfare for the Common Man), all subtitles and subheadings should follow normal sentence capitalization rules. This increases readability and comprehension.
Ignore these rules if you are composing in German (or another language with different capitalization rules).
Many consider those who capitalize “Internet” technological Luddites, while others consider those who leave it uncapitalized too informal for scholarly writing and journalism (note the New York Times continues to keep the word capitalized).
For this style guide, Internet is the proper noun that references the global system of interconnected computer networks. An internet refers to a system of interconnected computer networks. The word should not be capitalized when used as a verb or adjective.
Example: You need an internet connection to connect to the Internet, and Google has its own internet to securely connect its various server farms.
It is our duty to make our content more accessible to those with visual and auditory disabilities. Audio from interviews should include transcripts and descriptions. Photos and other graphics should include alternative text or captions describing what is depicted.
Do not include a graphic if is not immediately pertinent to your subject. Many blog enjoy using stock photographs to add visual interest because it can help drive traffic. You should not. It is a lazy form of creativity and a crutch for mediocre content. If you find an image that helps your audience understand what you wish to say, then use it. But if you do not, then it distracts your reader and detracts from the core of your message.
Graphs and other data visualizations can condense complex information into formats that are easy to understand. They can also help us find complex relationships that would otherwise be hard to see in tables and lines of data. But our knowledge of how they are best used and understood is still nascent.
- Do not rely solely on hue to provide visual cues, those with color blindness will have problems differentiating among many commonly-used colors.
- Provide alternative ways for those who use assistive devices to access your information.
- Do not only mouse-hover based interface elements, as many people use touch devices such as phones and tablets.
Most readers will merely glance at or completely ignore your annotations. But your closest, most devote readers will dig through them as closely as the rest of your work, searching for treasure and further insight. Though a minority, you must tend to these readers with the utmost love and care, for within this group are the greatest champions of your work.
The lack of annotations disrespects your readers’ intellect. Endnotes, their time. And inline citations, their attention.
As a general rule, follow the bibliographic rules that are common to your field (or the Chicago Manual of Style by default), but with a few updates that make sense for digital media. Your goal should be to offer a clear path for your audience to find your supporting documents. If it is an Internet resource, that means links to the original (and ways to access an archived version if they original is gone). If you are referencing a journal article, you should provide DOI resource when available. If referencing a book, it can be useful to provide the ISBN and a link to search so people know which version and printing you are using (since different print versions can have varying pagination).
{!-- examples --}
Although other style guides (including the might Chicago Manual of Style) offer options to use in line citation, footnotes, or endnotes. This guide is more strict on what is disallowed: No endnotes, footnotes (which in digital are the same thing), nor in line citations.
[I]n recent years, especially in America, there has grown up a system of annotation neither intelligent nor considerate. Instead of putting notes at the foot of pages, it jumbles them in a vast dump at the back of the book. No normal reader much enjoys perusing a volume in two places at once; further, though he may find his way, if he has the patience, from the text to note 345, he may have a tedious search to find his way from note 345 to the relevant passage of the text…. Consequently it may be suspect that five readers out of six either skip the notes altogether or skim through them in a lump, if they are interesting enough, without looking back at the text. {Style page 111}
Endnotes, break up reader attention. In books and journal articles readers have to flip back and forth between the page they’re reading and the end of the book or article. It is impossible to sustain attention and I usually end up having to reread the page. Inline citations also break user attention.
What makes footnotes work in print media is that they can be easily ignored, but are immediately available when needed. Many website make footnotes where the superscript links to the corresponding endnote, but this is also inferior. The whole page is shifted and reader attention is broken, especially since jumping back to the article almost never returns to the exact original position. Annotation methods for digital media must be like the footnote in a book: easy to ignore, but immediately available in a way that does not break the reader’s place in the text.
Side notes are nothing new, but in print horizontal space is at a premium. The most comfortable books have only space for two or three words in the margins. Thanks to our love of widescreen ratios, digital is the opposite. This means that we can easily insert whole citations beside the main text without being squeezed into narrow measures.
An alternative to annotations that are persistent in the layout is using an overlay that only appears when it is called via a link
Even a temporary loss of context can break concentration. Be careful of how your overlays are positioned.
Do not move the canvas, or block too much of the main content. Do not assume that your reader reads the middle or top of the screen. Some may read the bottom lines and scroll as needed, when your overlay springs from the bottom of the page, it blocks their view.
Offer a clear path to finding the physical materials you reference. Include digitizations if you are using rare materials with a description of where they can find the original. Do not only rely on links to sites such as Amazon, not all your readers can afford to buy every book that interests them. Including Worldcat books links can help your readers find books in a local library, and including the ISBN can help them find it at any bookstore they wish (though not all books have ISBN).
The averages lifespan of a webpage is about 100 days{}, which can make citing them as sources terribly difficult. Even resources and links from long-lasting institutions such as newspapers and journals can change, or fall out of use as they update their design, site hierarchy, or merge with others. If an Internet source is critical to your work, use an archival tool (such as the “Save Page” feature from the Wayback Machine) to create a permanently archived record for you to link to.
{The average lifespan of a webpage}
Traditional academic publishing involves months or years of writing, editing, and proofing before final publication. The publishing cycle for writing on the web is often much faster and simpler. If you are writing for a blog, you will often not have an editor nor fact-checker. But that means that you are solely responsible for the quality and accuracy of what you publish.
Many treat writing for digital serial writing more like journalism than long-form writing. For timely, serial, writing (such as a blog) this can be a good method. The shorter paragraphs and concise nature of journalistic writing helps keep your writing lively and engaging. But there is also good long-form writing on the Internet and it follows the same rules as good long-form writing in any other medium. Both forms have their uses and their audiences. Do not feel you must write only in one form. Use what is best for the message you wish to convey.
Write with the authority you have, but admit your ignorances and uncertainties. If you are unsure, say so clearly. Nobody is an expert in everything, and doubt is natural. Your readers will learn to understand and give what you say the weight it deserves. Those that don’t appreciate your candor are not worth your time.
Much research on decision making shows that despite corrections, initial established beliefs will continue to color and shape our decision making. So it is critically important to get your facts straight the first time. Be clear on the difference between opinion and fact. Do not make definitive statements when you know there are uncertainties. In good writing, honesty and accuracy are moral imperatives.
Anecdotes are not proof, but they can help tell the stories buried within your data.
Know the reliability of the source of your anecdotes. Do not blindly trust the sources of others, even if they are reputable journalists. As a scholar, the acceptable burden of proof should be higher for you than for journalists. All people, journalists included, tend to follow a herd mentality, and focus on a few points of view without looking at the broader picture. Your job is to take one step back when others are focused on anecdotes.
{!-- I’ve been putting this section off. It’s hard! --}
Do not undervalue replications. Do not suppress negative data. Both are critical to good scholarship, but neither receive the attention they deserve.
This is hard. Very hard. But necessary.
Failure is an integral part of our processes. They hurt. They teach us, they make is grow in ways we otherwise would not. To hide our failures is to hid critical parts of our reasoning. We hide the story of our growth, and leave a hole in or communal understanding of how the world works. It gives a false sense of omnipotence to our work, it is inauthentic.
When we share our failures, we teach lessons that are as important as our successes. We create new avenues for others to explore. One person’s failures is another’s One person’s failures become the starting point for another’s inquiry.
Public understanding of academic endeavors is terribly low. And this is in part our own fault. We By sharing our trials and difficulties, we show that our work does not just spring magically out of nothing. We show the rigor of our processes that are necessary for developing appreciation of the importance of our work and respect for our expertise. When we know more about each other, we can’t help but appreciate and love each other more. It is in our very nature. It is what makes us human.
Be careful of what you make light. Ill-timed levity can cause much damage quickly. Especially when you are writing about socially charged issues (such as gender or racial discrimination). When you are not the one who has been sinned against, sensitivity is paramount. No matter how amusing you think a joke may be, it will likely fall flat for someone who has suffered, or is suffering due to major injustices. Some issues must be addressed in heavy air and attempts to lighten the tone do them great disservice.
Treat people with respect, but avoid excessive deference.
On first reference, provide a person’s current full title, forename, and last name (e.g. President Barack Obama). Subsequent references should just use Mr. or Ms. Last name.
Those who have obtained doctorate degrees, as well as licensed medical doctors may have the title “Doctor,” as their will
While many who retire honorably from a titled position (such as congress members or military personnel) may first be referred to as “former-” or “retired-”. But use “Mr.” or “Ms.” on subsequent references as usual. The United States does not bestow lifetime titles and we need not indulge their vanity.
“Esquire,” which is a title often used by attorneys, is right out.
Respect preferred gender designations. The
Present a person’s full name and title on first reference, and then Mr., Ms., or Dr. and their last name thereafter.
Whenever possible, avoid gendered pronouns when referring to generic persons (i.e. in thought experiments).
This is important. The potential harm is huge compared to the necessary steps needed to sidestep the issue. Do not just choose to follow one rule without thought.
Whatever rule you decide to follow, make your choice being deliberately and conscious of the ramifications of that decision.
Write for an intelligent and curious readership.
The line between clear explanation and condescending can be thin and hard to safely traverse, especially when you are writing about situations or a demographic group you are not a part and have no experience with.
Revisions are an inevitable part of a good creative process; sometimes those revisions happen after the product has been released into the world.
If you are making minor grammar or typographic updates (such as correcting a misspelling or improper capitalization), you can leave a simple note at the end of the article. If you are making larger substantive changes (such as adding or removing sentences, or editing the semantic meaning of a large body of text), include the editorial note at the beginning so returning readers see it immediately.
Edits are usually made in articles without showing readers exactly what has been changed. This is a holdover of the editing process in print publishing that can be improved in digital.
Telling readers that an editorial change has been made is the minimum requirement of ethical publishing. But for the casual reader, knowing that a change has been made does little to help internalize how that change affects the meaning of the materials. By clearly showing our revisions and corrections, we can help our audience see the difference between what they read and what is correct.
You needn’t know how to build a website by yourself, but if you are writing for the web (and ebook formats, which often use a subset of HTML), it is important to know some HTML.
Many content management systems do not differentiate between
<strong> and <em> should be used for emphasis while <b> and <i> should be used for typographic clarity.
<strong>
Steeeeeellllllllllaaaaaaa——————
{!-- I hate this play, need a different example. --}
<b>
definition (noun) a statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a dictionary.
<em>
“But Mother,” he cried. “I don’t wanna go to grandma’s!”
<i>
He read it in the New York Times.
{!-- Discussion on using aside the way I use them on [http://bernardyu.com]. I have been ignoring cite because its usage seemed to be too narrow for academic citations, but may revisit soon. --}
Good typography goes far beyond choosing a beautiful font and setting the font size. It involves setting a good rhythm for your text, caring for the width of your lines, the spacing between your lines. Setting a good typographic hierarchy for your different textual elements.
In traditional publishing, your publisher’s designers take care of the design and layout of your words. In blogs, ebooks, and other self-published digital formats (such as PDFs), you have more control—and therefore more responsibility—over the layout and design of the media that contains your work.
Choosing the right typefaces is a complicated task, here are a few pointers:
- Unless you have are in design, do not use more than two fonts in one document.
- Choose fonts that are made for the task. If you do not know, go to the designer’s website and see what their intentions for the typefaces are.
- An easy way to find complimentary fonts is to find ones in the same super family (such as Museo and Museo Slab).
- Choose fonts by the same type designer, many designers will have a certain style that makes their fonts complimentary.
- Choose fonts that you like.
{Still trying to distill this into something simple and understandable and come up with ways to provide good examples}
There is much bad research on the readability of different styles of fonts.
There is no conclusive correlation between readability and whether a font has serifs. Familiarity with the typeface has much more impact on letter recognition and readability than type of typeface.
- If you use a sans serif font, use a humanist font that differentiates among similar characters such as the lowercase ‘l’, capital ‘I’ and the number ‘1‘. Also care for the differences between the capital ‘O’ and number ‘0’.
If you are not trained in design, it is hard to understand what constitutes a good font size for the typefaces you decide to use. Two general rules to get you started:
- The main body text should be at least 16 pixels. Any smaller and it becomes hard to read for anyone with poor eyesight.
- Use a typographic scale to build a clear hierarchy in your content.
Indenting the first line of a paragraph and including a line space between each paragraph performs the same function: establishing the borders of your text. Choose one or the other. Not both.
Unless you are using a dedicated typesetting engine (such as TeX) do not use fully justified text. Web browser and ebook rendering engines are incapable of the complex multi-line typographic alignments required to make it look good.
{Discussion of nested blockquotes on Tumblr}
Do not stack indents. Readability is severely compromised as the measure is reduced with each embedded indentation.
Whitespace is not waste. Like a wine in fine crystal, whitespace gives your content space to breath so its full bouquet can be fully appreciated.
{I’m not sure how opinionated this section should be. Far more talented designers have already spent much time writing on layout, I think the goal here is to balance a useful number of suggestions with links to others.}
Though choosing the right color scheme for your design is often a matter of taste, there are important matters of science involved. It is important to take care that those with colorblind disabilities are able to read your text.
{!-- color blindness examples --}
But that is not all, you must also make sure there is ample contrast between the text and your background, too similar and the text becomes more difficult to read which in turn reduces comprehension.
{!-- contrast example --}
These basic rules will provide a good foundation for determining a simple color scheme that respects your readers:
- The background and text should not share the same hue.
- Offer non-color visual cues for any materials you
Avoid putting dynamic text on background images. Unless you are careful, regions of text almost always become hard to read due to the lack of contrast between the background and text colors. If you do use background images, layer a neutral background color between the image and the text.
{!-- code example --}
Do not distract your audience within the main body of content. It is disrespectful of your reader and your content creators. Attention can be fragile. Distracting advertisements and unnecessary content that is stuck haphazardly into the main body of text will hurt readability and comprehension of complex ideas.
If you must include advertisements, do not just count paragraphs and stick them in. Find natural break points such as in between major sections. This also helps maximize their impact while also minimizing the number of distractions.
{!-- I will likely delete this section, deals more with journalism than scholarship --}
To write well, you must listen well. By publishing, you build a community of those who read your work. That community can be hard to find when you work in published in a journal or book, but by publishing online, you can see your community within your analytics and comments sections. Care for them. These are the people who cared enough about your work to voice their opinions.
Comments often have a bad reputation. Many publications use them, but most do not use them well. It does not have to be so. Carefully curate your participatory audience. Be like the orchardist and ruthlessly cull the hacks, trolls, bigots, and others who use their voice to unfairly discriminate and espouse vitriol.
Do not remove all the comments you do not like, remove the ones that do not expand the discussion. Allow meaningful disagreement, but not ridiculous idiocy. (For instance, if you are writing on public health, you need not entertain the unthinking anti-vaccination crowd.)
If you tend your community well, it will grow to become your audience will not only share your content with others, but can help point you to new avenues to explore. Highlight your best commenters, but not just because people will become more involved when they are acknowledged, but because good content begets more good content.{}
Autonomy is necessary for many who often face persecution, but is often abused by others. You should protect the rights of the former while discouraging the latter. Make sure your community is safe and inviting for the underserved voices and you will find that your community will grow to be warm and inviting to all.
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr can help spread your work to broader audiences, get feedback, and find discover pertinent research.
{!-- more on language use, and etiquette. --}
It is a privilege to spend your life studying the world. Treat that privilege with the respect and dignity it deserves. From that privilege comes the duty to share our knowledge and experiences with the community.
Break any of these guidelines lest you dishonor yourself.
Style, grammar, and usage:
I love it. If you change nothing, this will still be a fantastic resource.
Some thoughts:
The first paragraph of "Style, grammar, and usage" is essentially repeated in the 2nd paragraph of "Use an authentic voice."
"Let your reader know when you are beyond your expertise. We will trust you more for your honesty and knowledge of your limits." sounds a lot like "Write with authority but admit your ignorances. If you are unsure or you are outside your area of expertise, tell us."
Under "One space between sentences. Always." consider defining what a kerning table is or omit the reference since the reader may not be typographer or designer.
This style guide should be its own website, It's that valuable.