Tips for Effective Blogging

Some ideas on how to write effective blog posts for this class:

• Posts should focus on one or two topics. Unlike research papers or essays, which often can make several interconnected arguments, blogging is a short-form genre that requires a more compact structure. If you want to address more than two different topics, split them into separate posts.



• Posts will typicallybe either descriptive introductions (i.e. sharing information about one of our authors) or analytical responses (i.e. describing your reaction and starting to make an argument). Everyone is required to write two types of posts: "introductory" posts about the author they've chosen, and "analytical responses" to the readings for the day. More on those two below -



• Posts about the authors should be descriptive introductions. Each of you will choose a writer or writers to "introduce" to the class via this blog, from the reading list on the syllabus. When you post your introduction, make sure you give your readers enough interesting information about the writer, but not too much. Also, make sure to tell us about your author's connections to Catholicism. Were they born Catholic? Did they stick with it? Did they convert? Why?



• Posts about the readings should combine your reactions to the reading with an attempt at an analytical arguments connected to the text. Like all good academic writing, blog posts should assert something. But, you don't have to think of these as well-polished academic essays. They can be speculative, or fragmentary - they could just be a series of bullet points, for example. You could try to trace an idea or a common theme you found in the story. But you should still be trying to assert something about the text. A post might say something like "I really think that this author was trying to make a point about X in this story. Here are some quotes from the story that show this."



• Reading Response posts should include concrete examples or evidence from readings, class discussions, or outside sources. Make sure that whenever you are asserting something, it is based in evidence, and that the evidence is clear. you should try to mention the supplemental class readings if they connect with what you're discussing. When you're making points about a story, you should include quotes from the reading. Also, if you want, you can provide a hyperlink to outside resources online. Did you find something helpful online as you wrote your post? Link to it! It's a good idea to practice doing this, since this is a major aspect of online writing.



• Every post must include a title. Coming up with a good title for a blog post is a good skill to work on. It should give the reader a brief preview of what is to come, or maybe hint at the argument you will be making.