Tet's blog

By Tet, 4 years ago, In English

Hi everyone!

Since a ton of blogs are being posted everyday and let's say not all of them are worth reading ●︿● , I decided to write this blog so that we could agree on some proper formatting or at least get some advice from experienced users.

this is aimed to be a discussion

Points that I find important while writing a blog ( not that my opinion matters anyway (¬_¬) ):

  • use:

    • Italics for Titles, Foreign Words, and Proper Names. ( not just for making your text look better )
    • Simple English ( maybe some users aren't as good as you are )
    • Your brain to figure out if your text can be misinterpreted ( this blog is a good example )
    • A fresh topic as mentioned by CoffeeTime in here
    • Proper code formatting as said by vovuh in here
  • avoid:

    • Non-English or poorly written context ( probably like this blog ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
    • Wasting time without getting a point across
    • Bringing up topics that don't really concern the CodeForces community
    • Bolding stuff without a reason
    • Pinging people when it's unnecessary ( Ari takes an honorable mention for this part )
    • writing stuff that would be obvious if your IQ was above room temperature ( take my blog for an instance (ಥ﹏ಥ) )
  • don't forget to:

    • TURN YOUR CAPS LOCK OFF
    • (as Errichto suggested) DO NOT Say "sorry for my poor English", it's just a few seconds wasted for every reader. ⊙﹏⊙
    • Get your point across with as few words as possible without dropping any details
    • Preview your blog before posting it
    • Follow basic punctuation rules as mentioned by -is-this-fft- in here

Also this is my personal opinion, but I think that blogs like this have the most appropriate formatting ~(˘▾˘~)

Anyways that was all I could think of at the moment, If you have any point worth mentioning please comment it and I'll add it ASAP.

Thanks for wasting your time on my blog (〃⌒∇⌒)

P.S. : As far as I know, this topic has only been discussed 6 years ago in here

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it

Nice emoction btw XD

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +127 Vote: I do not like it

Say "sorry for my poor English" if you think you are not flawless ⊙﹏⊙

Please don't. It serves no purpose so it's just a few seconds wasted for every reader.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +50 Vote: I do not like it

    Thanks for wasting your time on my blog (〃⌒∇⌒)

    it's same as "sorry for my poor English", wasting readers time ಠ‿↼

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4 years ago, # |
Rev. 3   Vote: I like it -20 Vote: I do not like it

:pray: :sorz:

Thank you for these valuable tips, I hope to see beautiful blogs from now on.

As a sole member of soroush fan club I request people to start a orz chain.

soroush orz

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4 years ago, # |
Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +90 Vote: I do not like it

Important thing IMO are some very simple punctuation rules.

  • There is no space before any of the following characters: ., ,, ?, !, :.
  • Sentences start with a capital letter and end with ., ?, ! or ....
  • Multiple question marks or exclamation points should only be used on rare occasions.
  • Don't use things like "u" for "you".

So often I see messages like

hello ?? can u help me with this problem . i got re!!!!

while the following would already be so much better:

Hello. Can you help me with this problem? I got RE.

I was taught those in first grade. They are basically the same in every language that writes in Latin or Cyrillic script. And even if your native language uses some other script and you have not "formally" learned English, it still isn't hard to emulate what the other people are doing. And even if you can't, there are so few of those rules and they are so simple.

Basically it baffles me how so many people ignore those rules.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

    Thanks for your suggestion ⊂(・ヮ・⊂)

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

    Speaking of messages, adding "sir" doesn't make your sentence more grammatically correct, just more annoying!

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

It is also important to make sure that your blog is new.

so that you won't end up asking for a solution of a task with an editorial like this.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

Use proper code formatting instead of pasting it directly in the textbox, or provide a clickable link to the submission (use ideone if the code is not a solution to a problem). Explain what your code does (or add brief comments), use proper variable naming, spacing and indentation if possible.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +40 Vote: I do not like it

I don't know why I write this, but, in my opinion, one really important thing is to correctly format your code and use spoilers. I saw a bunch of blogs and comments where people just copy their submission, paste it through ctrl+v and submit their comment thinking this is a good formatted and readable thing. Come on, guys, there are so many things to format your code correctly in the standard codeforces editor.

Use spoilers when you want to ask some help with your code, I don't really know if someone really likes to scroll a comment which takes the whole page in 1920x1080 resolution. Also, copy-pasting the code without defining correct html-rules which determine if it's really a code is a disaster.

Examples:

Bad (without formatting)

Good formatting, yes? I don't think so. And now goes good one.

Good (block code)

And even more, you can use inline code if you want to highlight some lines of your code separately. Like this: "Oh no, I had overflow in this line: cur += w[i] * 1ll * cnt[i]; and when I fixed that I got accepted!"

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

    And Templates. If a 10 line code has a 100 line template, It's just annoying. Templates make codes hard to read. Please consider removing the template before posting.

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4 years ago, # |
Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

Length is also a factor. Blogs like this need a bit more explanations or sth in does bounds ...

They just don't feel right.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

Why am I the example for being toxic xD