(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Pay the Writer

Comment Policy

I had to switch to mod­er­at­ing com­ments to cut down on spam and bull­shit. Inter­net Ass­holery is a Hol­ly­wood T‑Rex of inter­ac­tion, and I have appar­ent­ly begun to look like a ten­der juicy lawyer on the Port-a-Pot­ty mov­ing around entire­ly too much.

So I had to pull the plug, turn off the music, and tell every­one to get out of the pool. Now there’s a bounc­er at the door check­ing to make sure that you mind your P’s and Q’s.

• It would prob­a­bly take a lot to get ME to blink, much less be offend­ed or actu­al­ly hurt. Ever since the death threats and the call for my exe­cu­tion, I’ve been pret­ty zen about reg­u­lar crit­i­cism of my prose. How­ev­er, I won’t put up with com­ments that are hate­ful or hurt­ful to oth­er com­menters or noth­ing more than spilled vit­ri­ol, so play nice or I delete com­ments with­out even an expla­na­tion. 
• Though this link is for Face­book, it will tell you exact­ly what kind of com­ments will be okay, which ones will be delet­ed because they are jerk­wadery, and which ones will get you marked as a spam­mer. 
• Any com­ment left on a tab page or a menu entry will even­tu­al­ly be erased.  (It’s not that I don’t love you; I just want to keep them clean.) I’ll leave all the com­ments on arti­cles up until the day they final­ly turn pow­er off to The Inter­net, but the menus and tabs would get very clut­tered if I let com­ments accu­mu­late.
• ANY com­ment on Writ­ing About Writ­ing may show up in a lat­er entry where I respond to it.  Con­sid­er that before you com­ment.  99% of my com­menters are ratio­nal, calm, and awe­some or just giv­ing some quick feed­back that would­n’t work to spark its own post. You can com­ment that you think some­thing is great (or even not my best) with­out wor­ry­ing that I’ll repost your com­ments, and you can call me on my gram­mar mis­takes for­ev­er with­out wor­ry. (In fact, I’m gen­er­al­ly grate­ful if some­one points out a mis­take I can fix.)

So please, unless you 1- Iden­ti­fy your­self SOMEHOW in the com­ment,  2- ask me not to use the com­ment as entry fod­der you may find it show­ing up in The Mail­box.
Above is a pol­i­cy about com­ments!  I will not post emails, PM’s/DM’s on social media, or oth­er pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence unless I have express per­mis­sion. 

Above pol­i­cy is also about com­ments left direct­ly on this blog. I have oth­er com­ment­ing poli­cies for social media pages like Face­book.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.