This is the first article in my How to Write Well series.
How to Write a Good Beedol Post
Introduction
When I first joined Beedol, there were only 2 other users. Sam (the creator of this platform), and Breeze (who I assume to be Jace). Sam had written 3 good posts. Breeze, had written [this]. Here are the contents of that post:
Make good friends. Kaboom! You are cool now!
I know. That's it. The problem is plain and obvious. But problems in other posts might not be so obvious. Keep in mind that I mean no offence to any other persons but am only critiquing their work. This is also my own opinion and you may disagree with me.
Consistency and Professionalism
Here is a post titled How to calculate the distance between any 2 points. The first thing I noticed was that it began with "How to" as the title. How to what? They author didn't even put the title in the actual article.
The second thing I noticed is that the post is missing quite a few capital letters. This makes it seem very unprofessional, which is not a good thing. One of the section headers reads calculating Distances in 3d. Why is calculating lowercase and Distances uppercase? Your casing must have consistency, which this article seems to be missing. Either stick to no capitals, or do it correctly. Don't capitalize some characters and skip others.
The post is also rather poorly written. The first sentence reads as follows:
first to understand this you would need to understand that you can make a right triangle out of any 2 points.
Never say something like "first to understand this you would need to understand". It just doesn't sound quite right and is also quite confusing. As writers, we want to convey our message simply and effectively. Before publishing, get a friend to read your article. How well do they understand it?
Make It Interesting
A good post needs to keep the reader's attention. It has to be informative, yet fun to read. This post, called Understand HTML and CSS, is literally just a list of elements, attributes, declarations, properties, values, and selectors. It doesn't even count as a "written piece". Try reading the entire thing through. I gave up after a paragraph. Actually, there aren't even "paragraphs".
Look at the above image. That line goes so long that it doesn't even fit on the page.
No one is going to read a boring article. No one is going to read an article that doesn't even qualify as an article. Take a look at this. Notice the use of exclamation marks. They're everywhere! This makes it seem as if the author Sam is really there and trying to explain something to you. The use of images and GIFs add to the experience. It isn't plain boring repetitive text. There are exciting visuals as well! Images make a post a whole lot better. So do personal note such as Thanks for reading!.
Use Markdown
As I said in the previous section, visuals make it all the more interesting. Beedol comes with markdown support. You might as well make the most of it! Bold, italics, and headers vary the text format. Instead of a blob of text, you have different variations of text. It spices things up a bit, and makes it easier to read.
THE END
No, not the end of this post. Well technically it is, but I have one final point too. Always end on a point. Be it a conclusion, or thank you note, end with something that is actually an ending. This post just cuts off.