Thanks for the tip.

Bloggers need to learn how to edit before they hit publish, as finding others to critique and editor your work before you hit publish is rare.

My goodily gracious, Edgar, “preview”/”view” in a separate window is such a helpful @#$%^(*&^% for that

Josh: There is no right or wrong way to blog. Gees, blogging is still in its infancy and while a style of blog writing has developed, it is a long way from becoming set in stone.

There are, however, some basic guidelines for technical articles and technical writing that turns your blog post from rambling to educational. You want to help people learn, not fill them in on how late you were to work and how you didn’t stop to take a shower or pee because you wanted to whip out this helpful post…we want the information directly related to the content, not your bathroom habits.

J.T.: Editing is another issue. The moment we hit “Publish” on our blogs, we become publishers, responsible for our blog content. Bloggers need to learn how to edit before they hit publish, as finding others to critique and editor your work before you hit publish is rare.

Some bloggers don’t want editors. But all bloggers should take a moment to proof and review and edit before hitting the button. After all, it’s their resume and reputation they are publishing.

One of the reasons many bloggers start blogging, especially those who want to blog in English or another non-native language, is to improve their writing and communication skills. I’ll be writing more on the issue of blog writing, from every angle, over the next few months.

I think if more high school English teachers read your blog, they’d actually approve of it and might *gasp* actually encourage it. It’s writing at its core; however, it’s not formal, so the standards are relaxed. Still, it *is* important to treat it as writing and an art that is *never* finished — because no writing is ever wrong, it’s just not finished. *smile*

The best way is to get another blogger/editor/other person to loon and critique your work, as they won’t have the biases about it that you will have.

For personal blogs, I think the rambles are the point of the blog. While that may cost you readers, it seems to me those are readers that one doesn’t want.

By the way, I think that this post could have been organized more as you describe organizing posts. You could have started with the bulleted points, been more succinct with the explanation and skipped the charming example altogether. If you wrote that way, I probably wouldn’t be reading your stuff and I certainly wouldn’t be leaving a comment here to say anything to you.