to me it's telling that there are so few posters here that seem to recognize the subject matter I try to bring to the fore.

There are a few simple and relatively easy ways to make your contributions more accessible, and thus gain a higher readership.

Here are the "dos and don'ts" that I usually go through before posting a diary:

1. Use proper grammar. Proper punctuation, capitalisation and syntax makes a sentence much, much easier to read. And if you consistently make your contributions hard for people to read... well, then they're only going to read them if they are pretty sure that it'll be a good investment of their time. Scoop also has a built-in spellchecker. Use it when you proofread.

2. Quote appropriately. If you link to something to highlight an item or to make a point (as opposed to simple clarification or reference) quote a sentence/paragraph or two. Don't quote the whole thing - if people want to read all of it, they'll go through the link - but give a teaser with the most on-point material.

3. Don't diary-spam. A diary a day might not be a lot on a site like DailyKos, but stuff cycles off the recent diaries list much slower on ET. If what you want to diary is not conceptually or thematically different from what's already in a diary on the recent diaries list, there's no need to make a new one, just update the diary and append an [Updated] tag to the title.

4. Use a teaser comment/tip jar. Adding a post-script to the diary in the form of a comment breaks the ice and gives others a hook to begin discussion.

5. Don't preach to the converted. Provide short and concise explanations (and/or links to short introductions to the material) if you're using specialised terms or covering material that requires knowledge that the relatively wide variety of international readers frequenting ET cannot reasonably be expected to be familiar with (domestic politics, for instance).

6. Use the fold appropriately. As a rule of thumb, I put two or three text paragraphs and a picture go above the fold and the rest (if anything) goes below.

- Jake

640 kiloton should be enough for anybody