Writing a newsletter

1. Your audience: who are you writing your newsletter for? How often will you publish it?
   
   
2. The name of your newsletter: you will need a name for your newsletter, and possibly also to design a masthead. You might also include a strapline.
   
   
3. Content: it might sound obvious, but a newsletter should contain news! This can either be about something coming up, or a review of something that has happened. Newsletters usually have some or all of the following sections:
   • A title
   • A list of contents
   • A piece from the editor
   • A series of short articles
   • Some news or bits of useful information.
   
   
4. Writing: remember to include the six Ws:
   • Who
   • What
   • When
   • Where
   • HoW and
   • Why.
   Keep your sentences short, don't use too many abbreviations or difficult words that people might not understand.
   
   
5. Editing: you don't have to write the whole newsletter yourself, you can ask others to write bits for you. Someone will need to edit their work though, to make sure it fits in the space, is spelt correctly and doesn't say anything you shouldn't print.
   
   
6. Layout: there are lots of ways to layout a newsletter. Look at some of the examples in the weblinks for ideas.

Blogs

1. Keep your posts  very short.
2. Write catchy headlines.
3. Break up your post  by using subheadings.
4. Include lists - use bullets.
5. Include links to other websites or blogs.
6. Edit your post.

Writing web pages

• choosing a sensible font, one that works well on the internet (this is written using Verdana).
• having consistent navigation (we use the links on the left to link between pages in each section).
• keeping the background colour the same on each page, rather than changing it all the time.
• the different colours you use. Try to make sure things are easy to read, but also attractive. Look at our website to see how we use colour. Black is for text, green is for headings etc.
• how you arrange pictures and text on your page.

Resources

1. Internet safety