3-Aug-06 (Created: 3-Aug-06) | More in 'CS-Java'

Writing for ONJava/java.net

Originally posted by Chris Adamson

Copied here for quick reference by Satya Komatineni


Writing for ONJava/java.net
or
So You Want to Write for ONJava or java.net?

Do you want to write an article for ONJava or java.net? I'll assume you do, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this page. So... great! Writing about computers isn't the easiest thing in the world, because you have to understand a lot of technological material and, more importantly, be able to make that material understandable to others. The lack of good documentation in the world shows that this is not an common combination of skills.

But it can be done. If you really know the material you want to write about, then a lot of what you need to learn is not writing, per se, but writing feature articles. And we can help you there.

The items in this section should give you what you need to propose, write, and publish an article on our sites. The material is arranged as follows:

  • Before You Write: Writing for ONJava/java.net - Process guide summarizes the writing process, from proposing an article, to revising it with your editor, writing and rewriting, signing a contract and getting paid, and managing your rights after it's published.
  • When You Start Writing: Writing for ONJava/java.net - HTML template simply has our usual headers for you to fill in, and (in comments) snippets of HTML to create figures with captions, lists, and other common HTML blocks. Note that you'll want to open this in a text editor, not a browser.
  • While You Write: Writing for ONJava/java.net - Style Guide describes our preferred means of handling HTML details (images, code, lists, tables, etc.) and stylistic issues in general.

One more thing... what are you going to write about? We're open to all manner of developer-oriented, Java-related topics. Just browse the site to get an idea of the kind of content we feature. We tend to prefer material involving Java itself or open-source projects and not proprietary commercial products, largely because the latter excludes much of our audience, though there are exceptions when such products are ubiquitous or de facto standards (Oracle articles would be an example). If you really need help picking a topic, we do maintain an occasionally updated list of topics we're interested in.