It just seems like common sense to me. If you are going to do something, learn how to do it well. If you don’t know how to do it or do it well, then at least listen to the people who do.
Some bloggers seem to think all they need to do is throw some words down on electronic paper and post it. Frankly, they are not looking for readers but they are merely looking for a venue to say what they want to say.
Some sites like Blogger haven’t helped that much, either. About half of the Blogger templates I’ve looked at break UI standards. Standards are there for a reason, and I’m constantly amazed at the “web designers” who don’t know the difference between appropriate actions for checkboxes verses radio buttons. Standards are there for a purpose. They give the user a familiar and consistent interface to interact with your website.
Blogger templates and links are another example. A link should stand out, it should be a different color and it should be underlined. Frankly, almost all of the Blogger templates are disappointing to me because they fool with these settings, which are supposed to be controllable in the user’s browser.
A blogger needs to know how to overcome these problems or find a template that works. For example, on the COG Perspective blog, I have to overcome some poor programming of the style sheet with additional line breaks. It’s a pain, but I do it because I want to make it easier for people to read the articles. One day, I’ll get past the point of it being too big of a pain and find another template.
Some bloggers seem to think that copying and pasting articles is blogging. No, actually it’s called plagiarism, and there are some corporate sites that will threaten you for doing that.
However, if it is allowable, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean up the article. I highly suggest you learn a few basics of HTML. If you really want to clean it up, then paste the text into Notepad and then re-copy and paste it into your article. Then add HTML as needed.
Don’t have time to learn a smidgen of HTML? Perhaps then you don’t have time to write that article after all. Because if you don’t have time to write it and not give me a headache, I’m probably not going to take the time to read it.