Writing style guidelines, suggestions

redlinederby Monday, 5/19/2014

Site manager

The following tips are only suggested guidelines. There is no penalty if you don’t follow the practices but the tone, readability and credibility of your posts will certainly improve and get more attention from visitors.

Use descriptive topic titles

Pick the one most interesting part of your post and use that as your title. Follow that item up with whatever type of information you’re sharing.

Bad: Look what I found
Better: Found a Mustang treasure hunt
Best: Found a Mustang treasure hunt, photos

Avoid all-caps

Using all-caps in any part of your post is a bad idea. Not only are words in all-caps harder to read, they also suggest that the author is yelling, shouting or otherwise making demands. Unless you’re writing an acronym (or intend to shout), you don’t need all-caps.

Capitalize topic titles

Capitalize the first word of your title and other proper words, let all other words be lowercase.

Bad: LOOK WHAT I FOUND
Bad: look what i found
Better: Look what I found

Use complete sentences, limit abbreviations

Thanks to email and text messaging, we’re living in the age of shorthand. That’s not a bad thing but it’s easy to get carried away. Just be mindful and use complete sentences and thoughts, otherwise people won’t know what you’re talking about.

Use paragraphs, hit the Enter key

Reading text in big chunks is difficult so be sure to use the Enter key every now and then to start a new paragraph. You don’t need a new line for every sentence but don’t throw down 500-words without hitting the Enter key a couple times.

Remember, you’re writing for others

Look, this isn’t English class. You’re not getting graded or anything, but remember that you are writing for other people. The easier it is for people to read and understand your writing, the more response you will receive.

However, all that being said, we do reserve the right to edit any post you make to improve readability without notice. We won’t change the content, opinions or meaning of your words - we just want to make it easier to read.