Many formatting decisions depend on your blog’s theme. A business-related blog often looks much like the company’s website, like ours. A personal blog gives you more freedom to be creative, but it’s still important to apply consistent formatting to help your readers navigate through your posts.

Here are a few formatting tips for blogs:

• Include a succinct title for each post. Just like a headline in a newspaper, the post title should draw your reader in and give them a sense of what your post is about.
• Choose one emphasis style. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, use italics, bold it, underline it or highlight it—your choice. But, don’t bold an important phrase in the first paragraph and italicize for emphasis in the second. And, certainly don’t bold, italicize, and underline one word. That’s a bit of emphasis overload.
• Don’t overformat. Blogging platforms give you access to a variety of formatting tools—you can add color, pictures, fonts, and more. Stick to a few reliable formatting styles, and use them consistently. Too many colors, pictures and fonts will simply confuse your readers and ultimately detract from your content.

We’re hitting the road again this week—and we’ll be on the lookout for more misplaced apostrophes. In the meantime, remember that we do not use apostrophes to make nouns plural. Use apostrophes to join words, like in contractions, or to indicate possession.

If you spot any misused apostrophes, send your photos to barbie@carpenterdoc.com, and we’ll feature them on our blog and Facebook page!

Here are four ways to keep your e-mails professional:

1) Write a direct subject.

An empty subject line will leave your recipient wondering what you want. Conversely, a lengthy, rambling subject line is equally confusing. Choose a short two- to six-word phrase for your e-mail that adequately describes the message contents. For example, your subject can read “July 27 Sales Meeting Minutes.”

2) Write in complete sentences.

Complete sentences with proper capitalization and punctuation instantly give off a professional tone. In addition, they clarify your content, allowing your recipient to properly interpret and respond to your e-mail.

3) Avoid emoticons.

If you are afraid that your message will come off harsh and want to lighten the mood with a smiley, don’t. Instead, rewrite the message so that it sends an appropriate tone. Do not use emoticons in workplace correspondence.

4) Include a proper greeting and signature.

It takes only a minute to add “Hi Steve,” and “Thanks, Jen,” but it makes a big difference in engaging your recipient and sounding both kind and professional.

In these instances, businesses have used apostrophes to make a word plural. Remember, folks, apostrophes should never be used like this. Use them to indicate possession or to combine words like in contractions.

We’re impressed with the breadth of the site—there’s everything from tips on headline writing to ways to improve the SEO for your site. Editors will enjoy the Editing 101 section of the site, which seems to be a useful tool for quick answers on editing.

It remains to be seen whether people, organizations, and companies will adopt Yahoo’s style suggestions—especially since many of these groups have their own style standards or follow more traditional style guides. For the time being, however, the site serves as another good resource for both web writers and editors.

We use Word’s reviewing tools, namely, Track Changes and Insert Comments, when we edit your document. This means that you will see tracked changes for minor editorial changes like punctuation, spelling, and grammar. You will also see comments in the right margin. We might ask you to clarify a confusing sentence, break down a wordy sentence into multiple ones, or explain a concept. In addition, we use comments to make any major wording changes because we don’t want to unintentionally alter the meaning of your document.

Editing is a collaborative process between the writer and editor, so you will not receive a clean copy that is ready to submit. So, here’s what we suggest you do once you receive your edited document:

Read through the document, noting our tracked changes.

If you agree with them all, you can accept the changes globally in the document. Otherwise, you can accept or reject the changes on a case-by-case basis.

Address the comments.

Read through our comments, and implement the changes in the document. Then, be sure to delete all addressed comments to create a clean copy of your document.

Ask for feedback.

If you want us to check your revisions or explain any comments, don’t hesitate to e-mail us. If you’re on a tight deadline, you might not have time for us to check your revisions, but it’s always preferred when possible.

Update frontmatter.

If you have a table of contents, list of tables, or list of figures, then be sure to update it once all of your revisions are complete. The page numbers might have changed as you revised, so this is the last step you should complete before submitting any document.

As always, you can contact us here or e-mail barbie@carpenterdoc.com.

“You literally grew up on the sand.”

Really? Did she erect a tent on the beach and live there throughout her childhood? I’m guessing not.

Check out our original post on literally.

Formatting helps guide readers through your document, so here are some ways you can structure your content to aid in reader comprehension:

Heading levels.

Headings are common in academic papers, especially theses and dissertations. Create one to five heading levels in your document. Using headings helps group related content and separate different content.

Bulleted lists.

Bulleted lists are an effective way to format like items. Bulleted lists attract the reader’s eye in a way a lengthy paragraph cannot. When using bulleted lists, make sure the items are in parallel structure.

Emphasized text.

Place emphasis on important words or phrases with basic formatting tools. Bold or italicized text focuses the reader’s eye on those words. Be sure to use one formatting style for emphasis. Do not alternate between bold and italics in your paper.

Boarder

A boarder is a person–either someone who boards, or receives lodging, or someone who snowboards

Border

Border is the more commonly used term meaning the outer edge or boundary.

So, a boarder might live in your house, but you cross the border when you travel from one state to another.