Writing a blog post is often very simple - but sometimes it's harder than you think.
Below we suggest a few general writing guidelines, along with some specific help on using our blog post edit page.
Important: please remember that you are responsible for what you write in your post and any responses you add. You should be sure to maintain good professional practice.
General guidance
- Jot down the key points you want to make, or information you want to share, before you begin
- Consider writing a draft elsewhere, then pasting it into our edit page
- Use simple, clear language.
- It can be hard to read a lot online, so:
- aim for less than 500 words
- break your text into short paragraphs
- edit your draft: cross out all the unnecessary words
- Feel free to add links to relevant resources elsewhere
Help with our edit page
When you're writing a new post, you'll need to:
- choose the kind of post: is it an update, a change or a question?
- enter a title for the post
- choose how you want to sign it
Now you can start writing! (Be sure to save your post as you go along, just in case. It won't be published until you say so.)
You can use the buttons on the formatting bar to format your post or add links. You can see a word count below your text.
Adding tags and services
You can add tags and services to your blog post to help people find it.
The tags and services you add also help us to show your blog post on the right service and story pages.
Publish your post
When you are ready, you can publish your post. When you do this, we will link your post to related stories so that more people will find it.
Say whether responses are allowed
You can say whether responses to your post are allowed, and for how long (for 30 days, 60 days or for ever). You can close the post to responses at any time.