Rule One
No Formatting.
We should strive for clarity in the words first and foremost. All of our writing is about what we think and we use words to communicate our thoughts with others. To that end, it is best to write your entire story/posting without any special formatting at all. We should use the building blocks of communication; periods, commas, exclamation points, parentheses, and the rest of the things we learned in school.
Write your story the best you can with only punctuation.

Rule Two
Rules are meant to be bent.
But they have to be bent with knowledge. Whatever text or html coding we are placing in our weblogs is placed inside an html table. This is good because it makes it easy for us. But it also means that whatever we place in there can help or hinder what we are doing. For example, if we place badly formed or unfinished html table inside that preexisting table, it will effect changes in the rest of the html page. Then when our posts are aggregated by someone else, our mistakes are also propagated throughout the system causing bigger problems than just one personal site.

Rule Three
We must format for clarity, continuity and standardization.
Something to know about the formatting of our weblogs.
In our attempt at cross-weblog unification into our common WWPP website, our weblogs are governed by a cascading style sheet that sets our font choice and font sizes. Basically this is a means of standardizing the way our postings look. What that means to us, is that we, as individuals, have no real control over the font choices because that decision has already been decided for the standardization of the group. What it also means is that you should not try to add font information because it is, at best ignored, and at worst, it causes problems.

Rule Four
Less is More.
Be conservative. Do not use colored text unless what you are saying cannot be said any other way. Colored text does not usually aid in comprehension, but it does contribute to making the sites look disjointed.

Here are three very simple formatting tools that can aid you in formatting your text for our WWPP weblogs. I am showing you the html codes, but these formatting tools are available in the web editing text box of your browser.

This is the html command for Bold. You can see that the actual word/words are surrounded by a code that starts the bolding and a command that ends the bold.

This is the html command for italics. Like the command for Bold, and almost all html commands, it has a beginning and end command.

This is the html command for "break," "return" or "carriage return", depending on your frame of reference. HTML does not understand normal carriage returns or spaces or tabs, so we need a way to create white space in our text, one way to do that is with the "break" command. The "break" command is one of the few html commands that does not require a closing command.

Rule Five
Never. Never ever use Microsoft Word to create html.
Microsoft Word is a word processing tool and is best used for spell checking and editing our text. Microsoft Word also creates huge volumes of non-standard html code. Do not use MSWord to create html. Use word for writing and correcting, but copy the text and paste it into your weblog. Do not copy Word html and past it into your weblog, it is a killer.

Rule Six
html - Do it the easy way.
When it comes to adding a link to your text the easy way is to type the complete link into the text like the picture below.
This is what this looks like when I type only the link -> http://www.wwpp.org into the text entry box. You can see that Radio automatically made it into a link. This is easy. I did not have to do anything to make the link. It just works.

Some times we do not want to see the link but we want the link to work. This little picture is the code for a link.
This is what that looks like when I type the entire code into Radio as you see it in that picture. WWPP. You notice that you only see the WWPP, but the link still works. That is a little piece of html code, "programming." As "programming," it is very important that it be correct syntactically. You may not notice this, but the quotes used in the code piece are straight quotes and not left and right curly quotes. The syntax of the code must be exact or things can go very wrong. ... This is not the easy way, but it may be necessary every once in a while. Save yourself some problems, do it the easy way.

Rule Seven
Keep your Audience.
We want the people visiting to get the complete story we are presenting to the visitor and we do not want them to wander off on another tangent, especially a tangent we have control over.

When we write for the web we are writing in a hybrid style. Some of what we write is standard linier writing where we go from point "A" to point "B" like normal documents. Some of what we write is what some people call, non-linier, where we will introduce some information and hyper-link to other web pages, documents, pictures, audio clips, and video clips. The trick is to decide where you want your audience to go.

If you think it is best for your readers to link out of your train of thought for a piece of information that is not easily contained in your narrative, link to it but find a way to get them back. If you have a lot of links in your narrative it will be hard to keep your audience all the way to the end of your story because they have had so many other places to get information through your links. In that case it is best to collect all your links at the bottom of your story, like footnotes.

The object is to make a conscious choice for every link. Ask yourself, "What will happen if my reader actually follows this link? Does that answer make my story clearer?"

Wrap Up
We want your thoughts.
Focus on your story and what you want to tell us. If you were a sports freak, we would want you "in the Zone." Be clear in your thoughts, do not worry about formatting at all. That worry gets in the way of you writing what you think about. If you are uncomfortable with anything at all, ask for help and you will get it.