Blogs+and+Wikis

**Writing Blogs and Wikis** Blogs work best when the author uses an honest voice while speaking in an informed and personal manner. They aim to engage the reader and encourage them to continue on the conversation started from the original blog post (mainly by commenting). Bloggers should write about what they know. This could include their opinion on a well researched topic or just what they did that day. A good blog has to be accurate while still remaining fun and interesting. This is done through the use of the first person voice which creates a personal and comfortable atmosphere for the reader. Wikis are a more formal way of sharing information than blogs. They don’t use the first person and avoid opinions. They simply express the facts in clear and easy to read language.

 **Tips from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/writing/** **The shorter, the better:**  Readers appreciate writers who do not waste their time. Simple, direct language communicates your thoughts more efficiently than your bloated demonstration of all that stuff the rest of us slept through in English class.  **Active voice:**  "Do it," don't "will have been done" it. Reserve passive voice for situations where you don't know the subject, such as crime and court reports. But even then, try to cast as much of the action in the active voice as you can  **Strong verbs:**  The best verbs demonstrate action. If you're writing a string of weak linking verbs, think about the action that's happening in your post, then rewrite a new draft using nothing but nouns and verbs in an attempt to better engage your vocabulary.

**Attribute sources:**  If you don't tell your readers where you got your information, many of them will assume that you are just making it up. You aren't, are you? Attribution brings you credibility, because readers know that you've got nothing to hide if they want to check you out.  <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">**Contextual hyperlinking:** <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"> Online narratives should allow readers to "branch off" and click through to other, more detailed, supporting content, depending upon a reader's level of interest. Almost all journalism refers to other sources, but online, a writer has the ability to link readers directly to those supporting sources. Note the URLs of those sources when reporting, and work those into your piece with contextual hyperlinks. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">**Use formatting:** <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"> Break up that boring mass of gray type by using: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">- <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">lists <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">-bold headers <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">-blockquotes <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">**Easy to read:** <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"> No block of text more than five lines on the screen. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">**Spell check:** <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"> With both an automatic checker and a manual re-read.