Some more blogging tips

I caught up with your blogs earlier today. Most of you are posting some very good items with lots of links. I've noticed that many of you are having minor issues with AP style and basic formatting. Here are a few things that come up with some regularity:

• You should always capitalize the names of political parties: the Democratic Party, Republicans and the like.
• The Internet is always capitalized.
• Web site is two words, with a capital "W," according to AP style.

Also, I'm still seeing some posts with no spaces between paragraphs, which make them hard to read. Just hit the return key twice after each graf rather than once.

Watch your links. You should always check them either in the Blogger preview window or after you post. Remember, you can always go back and edit your post. I've run into a few links that don't work. The easiest way to form a link is to copy it from the address bar and then paste it into the Blogger link box.

Work on getting some art into your posts if you're not already doing so. Search Google Images. There are some copyright issues that we need to be aware of, which we'll talk about soon. But a lot of what you'll find is public domain.

Example: If you want a photo of President Bush, enter "George W. Bush" in Google Images. The first few images you'll find are of his official government portrait, which you are free to use. You'll often find that that's the case.

An important part of blogging is the give-and-take between you and your readers. By next week, I would like to see all of you post at least one comment on one of your classmates' blogs.