Blog writing guidelines

Interested in writing a blog post? Please follow these guidelines when creating your contribution to Functional Ecologists. If you would like to discuss an idea for a post, please contact us.

There are various ways to communicate your research or relevant topic area through the Functional Ecologists Blog with Behind The Paper and Community+Ecology posts, and more! All blog posts are relatively short, written to a wider ‘popular science’ audience (i.e. not too much jargon or heavy statistics) and have plenty of room for creativity!

A cave-dwelling spider of the genus Troglohyphantes. Photo courtesy of Francesco Tomasinelli (http://www.isopoda.net/).
A cave-dwelling spider of the genus Troglohyphantes. Photo courtesy of Francesco Tomasinelli (http://www.isopoda.net/).
  1. Think about your audience. Posts should be relevant and accessible to those involved in the management of biological resources. If writing about your research, make sure you focus on the management implications.
  2. Write in plain language. Try to avoid academic jargon. Remember to define acronyms and initialisms at their first use, unless they are commonly known, for example ‘UK’ or ‘DNA’.
  3. Be personable. Use the first person (I/we) and a friendly tone of voice. Your post should be less formal than a research article. Try to use the active voice instead of the passive (‘we did’ rather than ‘this was done’).
  4. Use British English (-ise, -re, -our, ll, double vowels, -ence, -ogue).
  5. Remember the evidence. Back up what you say by embedding links in the text instead of using citations and references. Make a clear distinction between fact and your own opinion.
  6. Visuals are key. Please remember to send photos, videos, illustrations or infographics with your text. Make sure you have permission from the image/video owner and anyone who appears in the photo/video.
  7. Headings and titles help. Remember to include a title with your text. Consider adding subheadings to break up the post and make it easier to read.
  8. Keep it simple. Try to stick to 500-750 words for your blog. Split your text into shorter sentences and paragraphs, again so it is easier to read.

Ready to send us your post?

If you have written your post and your are ready to send it to us as a general guideline, blog posts should contain the following:

Group of flying Northern shovelers (Spatula clypeata). Northern shovelers have been found to disperse many different seeds via gut passage (Author Sándor Borza)
Group of flying Northern shovelers (Spatula clypeata). Northern shovelers have been found to disperse many different seeds via gut passage (Author Sándor Borza)
  • Title:
  • Author(s):
  • A few short sentences to introduce yourself.
  • Main text [max. 1000 words]:
  • Photos/Images/Figures [Please provide at least one, with copyright and credit]:
  • Featured image [At least 1200 by 675 pixels]
  • Social media plug [max. 200 characters, and if you want author handles and a photo]

Posts in a second language

My favorite goat, nanny number 418 behind a rock. Credit Frédéric Dulude-de Broin

We encourage authors to provide a second blog post in their native language or the language relevant to the country in which the research was conducted. The second language blog post will be posted on the blog and the two posts will be linked together. Please note that the second language blog post will not be copyedited and will be published as provided by the authors. If you’re interested in providing a copy of your blog in another language then please let us know when you email us about writing a blog post.