Blogging Tips   

Clarification appended

Dallas Morning News Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey led her staff in launching the nation's first editorial page blog. Here are her suggestions:

1. Be brief and informal. Breezy, conversational tone is good. Two hundred words is too long. Go for the quick hit, light touch, witty aside. Attitude required.

2. Don't be too proud to bleg.

3. Respond to previous blog postings. This is about conversation, after all. It's the back and forth that makes a blog engaging.

4. Vary your topics. Don't be a wonk.

5. Don't write anything you wouldn't want your mother to read in the paper.

6. Use hyperlinks.

7. Incorporate interesting, provocative reader e-mail. The best blogs are two-way streets.

8. Be quick to correct yourself.

9. Don't feel obligated to answer all blog-generated e-mail.

10. Don't over edit; but designate a blog boss.

--Dana Hull

Clarification: There was a typo in the original version of this sidebar on blogging tips that accompanied "Blogging Between the Lines." It now reads: "Don't be too proud to bleg." To "bleg" is to beg by blogging--asking readers for information, sources, insights and the like.