How to Post

The Centre’s Blog is one of the main showcases for the exciting research and teaching that takes place within the Centre for Medieval Studies here at Exeter. We welcome posts from all members of the Centre, both ‘free’ posts (on any topic relating to the medieval period, broadly defined), and entries into one of our two series, Research Postcards and Postgraduate Spotlight.

New posts are scheduled for every Monday during term-times, and on an ad hoc basis during University vacations. Blog posts can be anything from 200 words for a short announcement to up to 1000 words for a longer discussion piece. Posts can review events, help promote new books or articles, comment on recent news or media relating to the Middle Ages/medievalism, or discuss new research findings. All posts should contain one or two appropriate images and links to any relevant webpages.

In order to post, you will need to sign into the University’s central platform for blogs, sites.exeter.ac.uk, with your University username and password. The WordPress ‘toolbar’ should then appear at the top of the page; click on ‘new post’ to begin writing. If you cannot see the toolbar, please contact the site administrator, Edward Mills, to be added as a user.

By providing blog content, you’re helping to showcase the interests and activities of the medieval academic community at Exeter, as well as gaining experience of writing concise online copy for a broader audience. You should also take the opportunity to increase the audience of your post and those of others by sharing it on social media using the share icons displayed below your published post.

How to write for the blog

As Dr. Laura Varnam notes, there are all kinds of reasons why you might want to consider writing for a blog: blogging can be immensely liberating, ‘freeing up’ ideas that have been stuck in your head for a while, as well as helping you to share your work in a widely-read (and inherently open-access) environment. While we don’t have an in-house ‘style guide’ for the blog, we can offer a few points of advice for anyone considering writing something for us:

Keep it short. Posts on the Centre blog tend to be quite a bit shorter than essays or articles, usually averaging around 600 words (although we’ve published pieces in the past ranging from 200 words to 1,500 words in length). Consider how your audience will come across your piece: they’ll likely have numerous tabs open, and won’t print out a blog post to read it! In practice, this means that your post will likely be centred around a single idea, whether that’s an observation, an event, or a moment of historical interest.
Don’t assume too much subject knowledge. While it’s safe to assume that your audience will have some familiarity with medieval studies as a discipline, it’s unlikely that they’ll know as much as you do about the specific topic that you’re planning to cover. You may find it helpful to explain (or at least link to) terms that have a specific meaning: what is a ‘recusant’? If you’re writing about palaeography, what’s a ‘minim’?
Prioritise ease of reading. Paragraphs tend to be shorter in blog posts than they are in articles and chapters, often only extending over a couple of sentences. We don’t tend to include footnotes on this blog, although we can do so if strictly necessary. (One way around this is to embed links into your text.)
Visual interest is good! Pictures are your friend when writing blog posts, so please do provide them if you can. We can also embed video and audio with your post, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of this.

Thanks very much for taking the time to consider writing for the blog! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the blog’s administrator, Edward Mills.