A Guide for Writing Guides

[RuneHQ Robot 34]

 

 

Welcome RuneHQers!

 
Over the past few weeks I have been reading over the many different guides that users are posting, I am glad to say people are doing well, they make interesting reads and thank you for posting them for other RuneHQ Users to use.

Hopefully this topic will provide some useful tips on how to layout your guides to make them the most useful for other members. If you feel I have missed anything please feel free to reply with them and I will update it as new tips come in.

General Tips

• Text Styles and Sizes
  Try to make sure that you use the default or easy to read texts, try to avoid overly small or overly big font sizes.
• Paragraphs
  Try not to have your guide as all one block of text, it makes it less attractive to read and less helpful. Try to split it into smaller paragraphs, grouping together all relevant parts.
• Spelling
  This is important; you need to be careful about spelling in guides. If English isn't your first language or if you find it difficult then feel free to PM a member of staff for spell checks, or other members are normally happy to help. It is not overly important to distinguish between English or American spelling, RuneHQ uses American spelling but either is okay. If you are critiquing a guide, please don't be overly harsh on spelling, while it's highly recommended that people use proper spelling that shouldn't be the main focus of a scathing attack on the guide.
• Formatting
  This is not overly important but it can make your guide look nicer and more appealing, there is a section written below about possible formats.
• Images
  If you wish to include images in your guides, which can be helpful, please make sure that your keep inside of our rules (So no more than 500kb in size) and make sure they are of reasonable size to be seen, not to small or to big.
• First Person / Third Person 
  It is not vital but sometimes it can help to avoid using first person phrases in your guides, address things as Third Person phrases instead.
• Proof Read
  This is vital, you need to proof read your guides. Check that it makes sense, or it might help to get another person to read your guide, just to make sure it make sense to other people.

Formatting Options 

When you are writing your guide, or posting it on RuneHQ, there are many different types of effects you can put on your text to make them stand out, these include different colours, sizes, emphasises, and different font styles.

The main focuses you can put on text are bold, italic and underlined. These can be often used to highlight headings, sub-headings and other important bits of information that you want to draw people's attention to. It is better to use something like bold than to type all in capitals.

Other than using the above styles, you can change the colours of text, this can either be done by selecting a colour from the provided ones by RuneHQ, or you can use any form of Hex Code to add a very specific colour.

Short sentences are the best for getting a point across, it is vital to separate larger paragraphs into smaller more manageable amounts.

It is possible to align the text, either to the left, the right or the middle of the post. This is especially useful for when you are adding in major titles, it lets people scan your guide and pick out the bits they want to read or re-read.

Definitely avoid over using things like the "!" and "?", or posting in block capitals, it is not needed and you can use other forms of formatting to make thing stand out. Using "!" will just end up messing up a good guide, and normally frustrating those trying to read it.

For other information about formatting feel free to look over our FAQ on Posting Help Questions, What is BB code, how do I use it, and are there more than those listed?

Images 

Images can be useful when you are trying to highlight special points or to explain something to other users, they say an image is worth a thousand words, but when you are including images in your guides it is important to remember a few minor points.

You need to keep the size of the images reasonable; there is no need to overstretch the image because this will stretch the cage.

As well as keeping the size and shape of the images you need to make sure that the file size is under the maximum we allow per topic, the most we allow is 500kb.

If you do not make your own images you must accredit the original artist, whether it be by adding a "Contributor" section to the bottom of your post, or by writing under each image who provided it. This is the same with content, if there is content that was not written by you please make sure you give credit to those who gave it to you.

Closing 

Hopefully this guide has been helpful for you to create/edit guides. If you have anything you feel should be added to this guide then feel free to post it in a reply, and it will be updated as soon as possible.

Keep the good user guides coming, and thanks for reading.