Rocket Science

As a followup to my Messenging post, I thought I’d include a post on the style I’ve been using or at least trying to do.

• First paragraph: The first paragraph should stand alone, fairly short, and most of all be “interesting” enough to grab the potential reader’s attention.
• Visually interesting: Ideally every post would have a visually interesting element that doesn’t overpower or overwhelm the article. Most of the time I accomplish this using an image from Flickr, my own photo or image, or even a blockquote.
• Images: When I can’t use my own image, I try and use one from Flickr that’s Creative Commons licensed that enable me to do what I’m doing. I also add a “Photo credit” in the style of Flickr.
  <div style="font-size:8px;margin-top:-5px;text-align:right;margin-right:5px;line-height:10px;">Credit/Source: <a href="http://hostname/filename">Author</a></div>
• Quotes: I like to include quotes in <blockquote>s to help amplify points in my posts. I add a source line in a close to APA style format with a <div align="right"> style.
• Embedded Media: Similarly to images, I’ll embed media that’s Creative Commons licensed to enable me to do what I’m doing, or is publicly shared on a site like YouTube. I also add a source citation similar to quotes.
• “More”: Sometimes, when an article gets long, I’ll use the Wordpress <!--more--> tag to separate the post into a more manageable chunk.

Aside: There are a couple of my previous posts that don’t follow these guidelines that I’m still trying to figure out how to handle.