Guidelines for NextNature.net contributors

General Blog Writing Rules
-Focus on the topic of Next Nature. Read our FAQs and look at the Themes section.
-Use the word “nature” thoughtfully. Keep in mind the Next Nature is not about nature as most people understand it.
-Write for a general audience. Assume a high-school level of education.
-When writing, keep closely in mind that thousands of people will read your words (average 3000+ visitors a day).
-Think before you blog. Why should anyone be interested in this?
-Blog qualitative, not quantitative. There are enough posts. We need more good ones.
-Unless you are a philosopher, avoid philosophizing, vague assertions, and generalizations.
-It is often best to write a rough draft, and then return to it after a few hours or a day or so. You’ll have a fresher perspective, and can better judge if the post is suitable for Next Nature.
-Back up what you say with facts or examples.

Selecting a Topic for a Post
-Do a search within the website before you start writing. Check to see that your story isn’t already on the blog.
-Don’t write about something that’s similar to something we’ve written about recently.
-One topic per post.
-Search weird places for topics. Everyone tends to read the same few news sources.
-Do not talk about yourself unless you have a compelling reason to do so. This is suitable for personal reflection but not for reporting news.
-Avoid posting your work, or the work of friends. Often posts such as these result in low-quality work. If you still want to do it, ask a neutral editor to read your post.
-NextNature.net is a research blog. Sharing news is fine, but consider if your post will still be relevant after a year.
-Avoid sharing half-baked philosophical observations, especially when you are a beginner. Rather, share an observation on a scientific breakthrough or an interesting design piece.

Titles
-Choose a catchy title that clearly relates to the post. It’s helpful to include a verb in the title. If you saw your title on Facebook or on Twitter, would you be interested in clicking on it?
-Capitalize every word in the title except for articles such as “the, an, a.”

Images
-Every post must start with a strong image. Nature Nature is a highly visual blog.
-All images are 530 pixels wide, 100 KB max.
-Use the ‘feature image’ section to post your header image. Additional images should be placed in the body of the text.
-In the image options, select “none” for “link URL” (only if the image shows up as a link in the post)

Videos
-Avoid putting long videos at the top of posts. Choose a strong image or still instead.

Tags
-For Editors: Use the tagging system with care. This automatically links your post to other posts. Don’t randomly add tags specific to your post. Tags are like chapters. They should apply to whole groups of posts and be connected to the nextnature theme. Yes, we use tags differently than other bloggers.
-If each post doesn’t have at least three relevant tags, it probably shouldn’t be on the site.

References and quotes
-Credit your sources through links in the text, or through a note the bottom of the post.
-Credit the source of any image you use. Do not use images where the author has prohibited sharing.
-Academic-style references are only necessary for essays.
-Do not swap out some words from another author’s article and then post the work as your own. Instead, quote and correctly attribute the article.
-Don’t summarize wikipedia articles.
-Use double quotation marks for quotes.
-If you have a quote that’s longer than four lines, make it into its own independent paragraph.
Should go without saying: Don’t plagiarize.

Citing Books, Art, Articles, Etc.
-Italicize books, artworks, films, newspapers, journals, magazine poems and plays.
-Use double quotation marks for articles, exhibition names, and songs.

Style
-Avoid passive constructions. “He invented the robot” is better than “The robot was invented by him.”
-Avoid long or convoluted sentences.
-Do not repeat the same idea, or the same word too often.

Spelling and Capitalization
-Use American spelling.
-They’re = they are. Their = possessive.
-It’s = it is. Its = possessive.
-Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube are capitalized.
-“Internet” is not capitalized in the body of a sentence.

Numbers
-Spell numbers one through nine, after that, use numerals.
-Spell out a number if it begins the sentence.
-“18th century” not “eighteenth century”

Foreign words
-Italicize any word from a foreign language that is nonstandard in English. For instance, avant-garde doesn’t need to be italicized, but avant la lettre should be.
-Only italicize a foreign word the first time it is used.

Punctuation
-Use all special punctuation sparingly.
-Using excessive dashes – like this – can annoying – and intrusive.
-If you use dashes, use an en dash to separate thoughts – hyphens are only used to connect words like “co-option” or “un-American.”
-Avoid parenthesis. Use commas instead to offset a thought, unless strictly necessary.
-Scare quotes are “fine” to indicate irony, but don’t “overuse” them.
-Use semicolons correctly. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
-Use colons correctly. Capitalize the next word after a colon.
-Do not use a comma between the last and the second-to-last items in a list.
-Apostrophe + s indicates possession, not a plural. “The animal’s animals were very animalistic.”