The Newsletter - Images, Camel Case & Robots

Hello Ruth,

If you're reading this newsletter, let me tell you I'm so grateful. Here we are, smack in the middle of the holiday season and you're opening this newsletter. As we say in Arizona, "Gracias!"

Right now, I'm happy to be here in Scottsdale, where we're enjoying the usual mild December. I heard about a family whose PHX - PDX flight was canceled. So they returned from the airport, loaded the bags into one of their cars, and headed out to I-10 to pick up I-5. They encountered some fog in the early morning but apparently arrived without incident after 22 hours.

For anyone who doesn't know, PHX is the Phoenix airport code (pretty obvious) and PDX is for Portland, OR. It's a well-traveled route and one I've done myself. If you're interested in airport code trivia, check out CPG Grey's video The Maddening Mess of Airport Codes! video. Grey is an entertaining master of trivia. (Who says you can't learn from YouTube?)

I'll close out with a wish for a safe and happy New Year to all.

Ruth Ann Monti

Writing Tips

Most writers who publish on the web know that images add value to the whole piece. This is especially true for social media posts, where images enlarge a post's footprint on the viewing page.

But how many images are enough? Or too many?

Writing experts recommend one image for every 150 - 300 words. There is no limit to the number of images you can include. Just be sure they relate to the content in some way. Use captions if you need to explain why, and always add alt text for your images.

Read more about alt text in SEO/Content News below.

My Content Services

SEO/Content News

Making the web more inclusive for people with disabilities will be a big topic in 2023.

Think about using tools and practices to make your web content friendlier to people with disabilities such as low vision. Here are two easy ways to get started.

Alt Text. If you aren't familiar with alt text, it's content that describes an image to search engines (which otherwise only see code that there's an image) and is read aloud on screen readers. Using it is a smart SEO strategy as well.

Camel Case/Pascal Case for Hashtags. Use camel, or Pascal, case in your hashtags to distinguish words in hashtags with more than one word. Examples: #CamelCase #PascalCase

Don't Expect AI to be...Intelligent

Last week, I reported on an AI chatbot that composed irritating, spammy tweets for Weezer frontman Rivers Phoenix. It turns out that most AI being created isn't supposed to demonstrate common sense, ZDNet reports.

Instead, the focus has been on high-level functioning to handle very complex work and even make predictions based on modeling. For example, AI can predict how proteins will behave and compute linear algebra.

Still, an AI-directed vehicle can't sense a nervous passenger and react by slowing down. It's possible to have "Level 5 autonomous cars without common sense," one engineer told ZDNet, referring to self-driving systems. "But you're going to have to engineer the hell out of it."

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