---
title: "Commandments for a publishable article"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/20/commandments-for-a-publishable-article.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/20/commandments-for-a-publishable-article.html"
published: "2003-08-20T17:34:00"
updated: "2003-08-20T17:34:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I was having a chat with Lauri Travis, one of the editors of MSDNAA . Lauri has been reading some of the blogs here, and was glad to find lots of great .Net content in this little community. In our chat, I suggested…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Commandments for a publishable article

By Roy Osherove August 20, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published August 20, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

I was having a chat with Lauri Travis, one of the editors of [MSDNAA](http://msdnaa.net/). Lauri has been reading some of the blogs here, and was glad to find lots of great .Net content in this little community. In our chat, I suggested Lauri created her own .Net weblog, since she helps run a .Net user group, and an editor on one of the biggest tech related sites on the net.

We talked about what one would write about in such a blog, and I immediatly thought that, given her current role, she could contribute as to the process in which she makes the selection between publishable material and stuff that erm.. is not publishable.  She said she has no real time to start her own blog, but she could provide me with her “commandments” to a publishable article:

1. Technically relevant subject matter.
2. Up to date with latest version.
3. Plenty of code that will build with no errors in VS .NET.
4. A good explanation of the code in the article.
5. Code that is well formatted in the article and downloadable source code with the complete project files.
6. Articles that are chosen for the Contributor Spotlight Section typically have about half source code and about half text.
7. Articles that discuss things that are not common – embedded technologies, mobile etc.
8. Last but not least – my favorite articles are the ones that make you go “Wow!  That was neat! I want to try it!” 

**Update:**

Lauri says: “Everyone who reads this should send me an article for MSDNAA!”

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Aug 23, 2003

    ### [Screensaver from hell](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/23/screensaver-from-hell.html)

- Aug 20, 2003

    ### [I give up - Career Calculus](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/20/i-give-up-career-calculus.html)

- Aug 18, 2003

    ### [Google minus weblogs](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/18/google-minus-weblogs.html)

- Aug 17, 2003

    ### [Google binding](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/8/17/google-binding.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/