Mind Your Ps and Qs
Tip Of The Day — On following etiquette
This is part of a series of daily tips for writers, published to share ideas and suggestions on our craft. Everyone will have different advice on writing, so the tip below is just a personal selection which I hope you will find useful. Do share any of your own in the comments.
Every organisation has its own culture, norms and expectations, and Medium is no different. It takes a while using the platform to get a feel for the community, and thankfully it is a friendly and supportive online experience.
A Medium friend Wild River has just published an excellent guide to the expectations of behaviour among users, called “A Guide to Medium Etiquette” which is well worth a read, as a follow-on to her amusing article on “The Seven Deadly Sins of Medium”.
As well as containing links to Medium’s own terms of use, and rules for the site, the guide is a useful introduction to the informal culture of Medium which is worth knowing about, covering topics such as etiquette around clapping, highlighting, commenting, critiquing, following, reciprocity, spelling, pronouns, emojis, scams, tagging, and perhaps most importantly, about being kind:
Incidentally the title of this tip alludes to an interesting expression, “mind your ps and qs”, of which the origin seems uncertain. It means “to mind your manners”. Some suggest it comes literally from the difficulties some children have in getting their letters p and q the right way around, while there are other theories as well:
Whatever the origin of the phrase, it is worth being aware of the etiquette of any community we join!
I hope you found this article useful, and any tips of your own in the comments.
Previous tips:
Day 25 — On using informal language
Day 24 — Put a Tigger in your prose
Day 23 — Dedication — time, place, space
Day 22 — On spell-checking, Grammarly and proof-reading
Day 21 — The five unspoken commandments of Medium
Day 20 — George Orwell’s six tips on writing style
Day 19 — The importance of interaction
Day 18 — Replying to comments
Day 17: Engagement
Day 16- Attention-seeking behaviour — the importance of your first sentence –
Day 15 — Keep it snappy — headlines —
Day 14- Subject selection —
Day 13 — Making time —
Day 12 — Deadlines —
Day 11 — Layout —
Day 10 — Niches for Riches —
Day 9 — Do your own research —
Day 8 — Choosing your subject —
Day 7 — Reverse engineering success —
Day 6 — Planning —
Day 5 — Location —
Day 4 — Dictionary and thesaurus —
Day 3 –Quotations
Day 2 — Mind your language — learning new words
Day 1- The Notebook
As always, thank you for reading.
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