Thinking about writing for the innovation blog? Here’s some quick tips for you!

1. Before you start writing, read few articles from the blog to understand the writing style we follow. Note that SIL-ver Lining features articles on the theme of Innovation. Make sure to link your topic and perspective with the correct theme!
2. Write in short paragraphs. Each paragraph of your article should be 3-4 sentences, not more. Use conclusions and summary in every paragraph.
3. Add a catchy title that makes the audience interested and excited to click on the article. If you are writing about a field visit on TUP, and the title is something as bland as “My TUP Visit: Things I learned!” then the audience who have been to TUP visits and have no reason to know more about it, would simply skip reading it. Instead, if you focus on the findings of the field visit, a title like “3 things you didn’t know about poverty in Bangladesh” or “The truth about poverty” is likely to generate more interest.
4. Elaborate all the abbreviations when they are used the first time. Write ‘Social Innovation Lab’ instead of ‘SIL’ for the first mention, and then you can continue using ‘SIL’. This helps external audience to understand who you are referring to. Add hyperlinks to organisations, programmes, people, blogs, events, research reports mentioned.
5. Add complete references. When referring to something that is not known to the general audience, like: Senior Management, Communications, Directors, etc, they should be mentioned like, BRAC Senior Management, BRAC HR, BRAC Communications, BRAC Migration. It should be done carefully since we often do not notice that how we refer to our programmes is quite alien to the person who’s not used to the BRAC jargons.
6. Check for basic spellings. Press Ctrl+F and type “Z”. You will find the spelling errors where you have used “Z” instead of “S”, as used in the British spelling. Replace your spellings like ‘Organized’, ‘Mobilization’, ‘Utilizing’ to ‘Organised’, ‘Mobilisation’, ‘Utilising’ etc.
7. You are encouraged to keep your article within 400 words.
8. Attach images separately with your article. The images should be of good quality; should be bright and visually strong enough to attract audience interest. If you have taken an image from google then do mention the source.
9. Send your articles to ‘innovation@brac.net’ with the subject line “Article for SILver Lining” and mention your name, designation and department.
10. Go to Gravatar.com and open an account if you want your picture to be shown with your article (Not mandatory). You can add your author biography there along with your picture. This will only take few minutes. Otherwise send your biography within 40 words separately with your article (Mandatory).

Note: If you are looking for assistance or a co-author from the SIL team, you can call at Tel. 9881265, ext. 3315.

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Masrura Oishi

Masrura Oishi is an over-thinker and procaffeinator. In her free time, she pretends to be a philosopher and does some development work for BRAC Social Innovation Lab. She invests her insulin pumped energy into reading, writing, traveling and living!