davidgasquez.com
📚 Personal bits of knowledge
📝 Add title guidance for blogging and writing
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Blogging.md
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Blogging.md
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- The title can also convey your writing style and tone.
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- Be cautious with overly clever or punny titles if you don't have an established audience.
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- Consider title-driven creation: first choose a compelling title, then write content that delivers on its promise.
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- [Good titles are pointers to a latent space](https://taylor.town/how-to-title). Titles travel on their own through [[news]] feeds and social networks. Many people share or curate from the headline alone, so it must stand on its own. Choose headlines that respect reader [[focus]] and align with your [[values]]. Good titles:
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- Make a strong claim about the content
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- Are almost too specific
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- Use unusual word combinations
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- Evoke curiosity
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- The inverted pyramid works well for blog posts. Put the tweet-length version of the post in the title or first paragraph. Get to the point quickly, then elaborate. Readers can bail out at any point of the text and still take home most of what mattered, while the meticulous crowd can have their nitpicks addressed toward the end.
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- [You're not just writing for today's invisible audience](https://web.archive.org/web/20250219111210/https://andysblog.uk/why-blog-if-nobody-reads-it/). You're writing for:
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- Future you. Your posts become a time capsule of your evolving mind.
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Writing.md
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Writing.md
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- [Writing that sounds good is more likely to be right](https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html). Making sentences sound better forces you to fix ideas unconsciously. Good rhythm matches the natural rhythm of thoughts—use rhythm as a guide for getting ideas right.
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- Use the active voice.
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- Write in a conversational tone. Think about readers when writing.
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- [A strong title is a pointer to a specific idea](https://taylor.town/how-to-title) and becomes a reusable handle in [[Communication]] and [[Ideas]].
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- [Finding a piece's "true name" often reveals its core narrative](https://taylor.town/how-to-title). If the title is fuzzy, cut back to the main thread and sharpen [[Focus]].
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- [Divide things into small chunks and if you have multiple points in a text, number them to make replies easier](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/). List the points you want to make in a logical order. This allows you to remove the clutter and avoid confusion. Use the [Minto Pyramid](https://scqa.lifeitself.org/) or another standard structure like this one:
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- Decide what you're actually saying. [Define a clear thesis](https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-bugs.html). State the main point before you give the reasoning that leads to it.
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- What is your main point? Who are you writing for?