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One of the cardinal rules of web writing is to avoid large blocks of text. There are plenty of excellent web writing guides that exhort you to break up your text, using bullets, numbered lists, quotes, paragraph breaks, images-- anything, anything to avoid creating an intimidating wall of dense, impenetrable text.

Blogs work because they're simple. When we
clutter up our blogs with a zillion widgets,
features, and add-ons, we're destroying an essential part of what makes blogs worthwhile.

It's OK to be yourself; at some level, it is a cult of personality: people are reading not only because your content
is useful to them, but because they like you. It's normal to inject a regular dose of yourself into the conversation.

But like Tabasco sauce and other powerful seasonings, a little YOU goes a long way. A really long way. Write accordingly.

If you haven't posted anything new to your blog in a while, don't waste our time with apologies. Just write! The best apology is new and improved content. Maybe with a wee bit more consistency this time, though.

I find meta-blogging -- blogging about blogging -- incredibly boring.

Yes, exactly like this one.

The problem with Top (n) Lists is that they become
a substitute for critical thinking,

A blog without comments is not a blog.

2. No Author Photo

• It offers a more personable impression of the author. You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you're not trying to hide. Also, users relate more easily to somebody they've seen.
  
• It connects the virtual and physical worlds. People who've met you before will recognize your photo, and people who've read your site will recognize you when you meet in person

Your posting's title is microcontent and you should treat it as a writing project in its own right. On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do.

Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting.

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go

Generally, you should provide predictive information in either the anchor text itself or the immediately surrounding words. You can also use link titles for supplementary information that doesn't fit with your content.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation

8. Mixing Topics

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

What matters is that the user experience is that of immersion in comprehensive treatment of a topic, as opposed to a blog-style linear sequence of short, frequent postings commenting on the hot topic of the day. It doesn't matter what software is used to host the content, the distinctions are:

• in-depth vs. superficial
  
• original/primary vs. derivative/secondary
  
• driven by the author's expertise vs. being reflectively driven by other sites or outside events

If you're an expert who wants to live from adding to the world's knowledge, you must go beyond the mainstream Web model of single page visits driven by search traffic. It's easy enough to build a website that freeloaders will use, but that shouldn't be your approach. You must change the game and create content that's so valuable that business users are willing to pay for it.

You should also focus on material that lower-ranked content contributors can't easily create in their spare time.

Both of these needs are met when you produce in-depth content.

And from another perspective, consider what former Wired editor Constance Hale wrote in Sin and Syntax:

"The second-person pronoun (you) lets the author hook the reader as if in conversation. Call it cozy. Call it confiding. You is a favorite of the Plain English folks, who view it as an antidote to the stiff impersonality of legalese and urge bureaucrats to write as if speaking to the public...

If your brain had a bumper sticker, it would say:

I heart conversation.