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Guidelines

Basics

Here are some basic things to keep in mind when writing for Kinsta.

Must-haves

Your content must contain at least the following information (“The Five Ws”):

  • Who: Who is this for? (Define and write according to your audience.)
  • What: What is this? What does the reader need for this? (Definitions and requirements.)
  • Where: Where can you find this? (Navigation menus, files, functions, etc.)
  • When: When is this the best option? (When should someone use this over something else?)
  • Why: Why does someone need this? (The benefits, the reasons for the method, the expected results.)

Writing principles

  • Write concisely: Use the shortest sentence possible in its clearest form. Less is more.
  • Avoid repetitions: If you already said something, there’s no need to mention it twice unless you have a strong reason to do so.
  • Write consistently: When you’re writing, you often establish certain patterns, terms, and other forms of addressing subjects. Be consistent and use the same terms and patterns throughout the content.
  • Keep a good reading flow: Start from the beginning and progress gradually until the end goal.
  • Avoid fluff and filler content: Get to the point. Avoid wordiness, cliches, redundancy, and stating the obvious. Some examples: “in our opinion,” “in our experience,” “in fact,” “as a matter of fact,” “to be honest,” “really,” “we believe,” “we think,” and “in order to.”
  • Write according to your target audience: If your article targets beginners, don’t dive into advanced topics. Similarly, if your article targets advanced developers, don’t describe basic concepts.
  • Keep focus: Don’t go away from your content’s subject. Stick to your topic.
  • Use “we”: When referring to yourself as the author, use “we” and “our” instead of “I” and “my.” We proudly write, research, edit, and publish as a team, and we want our readers to know that.
  • Address the reader as “you”: When referring to the reader, use “you”. Not “the user” or anything else.
  • Use gender-neutral language: Instead of “he/his/his” or “she/her/hers,” use “they/their/theirs”.
  • Writing “Dos and Don’ts”: Studies show that our brain records the first information we receive. Therefore, if you are describing “dos” and “don’ts”, state the “do” first and the “don’t” later.
  • First things first: In your narrative, the reader shouldn’t have to read a sentence more than once to understand what to do. Always provide the steps in the order their brain will process.
    • Do: “To edit this function, open path/to/the/dir/functions.js, and scroll down towards the middle of the file to find it.
    • Don’t: “Open the file functions.js, located under the directory path/to/the/dir, to edit this function, which is in the middle of the file.”