
Article writing: use of bold, italics, and underling
With 10 published, I decided it was time to rewrite all of them. Or more accurately: reformat them. I began with the oldest and began making use of bold, italics, underlining, and added some eye candy by including a small image in each (less than 20kb is my rule of thumb to minimize loading time and the likelihood of losing the interest of my visitor). I also did some minor editing for conciseness, clarity, and to keep paragraphs reasonably short.
I have 4 out of 10 done so far. I was pleased with the changes I made to the first 3, but on the forth, found myself wondering afterward if I'd gone too far toward the other extreme, and over-formatted it with too much underling, bold face, etc.
Any other content focused IM'ers have any general rule of thumb they use in this regard? I'd appreciate any advice. My writing background is mainly academic, where formatting effects were less important than substance, accuracy, and clarity. Now that I'm writing to a different audience than a bunch of academics, I know my writing style has to change as well to play to that audience if its to grab their attention and hold their interest.
My worry is in turning off with excessive use of formatting effects, while realizing at the same time that I have to make some use of these, as paragraphs of plain text is not going to cut it in the world of IM.
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