Advice for new bloggers

My usual piece of advice is to blog frequently, but Megan McArdle provides an even better word of advice:

Note to all new bloggers: this sort of thing is generally, at least in the blogging circles in which I travel, considered to be rather poor form. Worse, indeed, than accidentally neglecting to provide a link to someone you have already conceded to exist.

That doesn't excuse me for forgetting the link — I shouldn't be so careless on that score. But if you use substantial parts of another blogger's post, you should mention that you found it somewhere else. Direct paraphrase without even attempting attribution is regarded with less horror by bloggers than it is by English professors . . . but not all that much less horror. Especially since linking a source is a lot faster and easier than footnoting.

The answer to the question I posed in the title is, basically, "Always!" As Nick Gillespie noted yesterday, "there's no cost to acknowledging sources—if anything, it's a sign of erudition and plugs an author into a broader network of thinkers." Besides, as he also noted, if you go over the line you're very likely to be caught.

I'd add to what she says about linking being "a lot faster and easier than footnoting" that it's also significantly more useful for the reader. That argument seals the deal every time for me: if I want you to have to work hard to understand what I'm writing, I'd be an academic, not a blogger.