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Discussion on: Writing a technical article/blog 101 ✍

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sshine profile image
Simon Shine • Edited

As someone who is familiar with writing but new to blogging, the following tips were new to me: ask for feedback, and use a cover image. I will ask for feedback in my next post, which will be about some software that I release, so it should be perfect.

I'm still not convinced how to pick a cover image; I could pick random art from my artist friends to simply promote it. Considering that I aim for cover images to hold no other information value, that is probably what I'll do. Thanks for motivating the thought. :-)

On the subject of composition one could elaborate even more; I like to think of online "short-form" reading like downloading JPEGs on a modem where you get gradually finer pixelation:

  • The title: You can only really specify the domain.
  • The caption ("tl;dr: ..."): You can summarize your findings in one short sentence.
  • The first paragraph: You can summarize the most important part of your findings in 3-4 short lines.
  • The rest of the article should proceed in a similar fashion. How "beginning, middle and end" work is covered better elsewhere.

At any point, the reader will quit. Give them as much as you can with as little as possible. This style of writing is not "long-form" as demonstrated e.g. by VICE and has its limitations. But I would rather always keep reading to at most 5 minutes. This blog post of yours says 5 minutes, too.

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vaibhavkhulbe profile image
Vaibhav Khulbe

Great points here! Thanks for this comment :)