5 key lessons

5 key lessons to take forward in writing blogs

The first lesson I would like to share is to plan everything out on paper first. Make a quick note of ideas possibly a mind map. I find this very helpful as it keeps you on course during the writing satge and you always have somthing to refer to that you wrote youself. It is also very useful if you computer crashes or doesnt save your work as you have some notes to start again with.

Next, type up your work on word or a document outwith the blog as its is easier to alter and change work on these documents. They also have spelling checks and most people are more familiar with the way they work and how to alter things. Using a seperate document is also good as if there is a back-up copy of your work if somthing goes worng for example the internet crashes.

I always make notes of the useful websites that I find as sometimes they can be hard to find again if you go back to find them another day. This saves time in searching and gets you directly back to the information you want and allows you to continue working much quicker. It also reduces Internet frustration.

Trying to use pictures and quotes without breaking the copyright laws is difficult but i find that if you put a caption on the picture saying where it is from then you are less likely to get into trouble from “borrowing” someone else’s pictures. When it comes to quotes as long as you out them in quotation marks and say who first said them then that is not seen as plagiarism. I would never use only wikipedia for a piece of work as the sources are never a hundred percent reliable and copying the source word for word is illegal and will get you in a lot of trouble from the university.

When I was writing I chose to write for the audience of digital interaction designers in first year as i thought it would be easier for me to connect with an audience that were in the same situation as me. Also i believed that if i were to write for an older audience or a designer with more experiance I may have come across as an immature or not have connected as well to them as a reader.