What To Do When You Make Mistakes Blogging

If you make a mistake blogging, admit it.  If necessary, apologize for it.  If you mess up, do not deny it, or hide it.

/READ MORE// Blogging the Truth

Mistakes, big important ones or tiny insignificant ones, are inevitable.  In the online world, mistakes make some people very upset.  However, you can do a lot to help yourself - and your credibility - recover by how you handle the mistake after it comes to light.

As a general rule, many bloggers try to avoid editing a post after it's been published - part of this is the transparency we talked about earlier.  Sometimes, however, you may need to correct the original post if you make a grammatical, spelling, or factual error.

There are some conventions that have evolved for bloggers to indicate corrections in posts, and you can benefit from using these.

Many bloggers make corrections by using the strikethrough text on the original error and following it with the correction immediately after.  For example:

Chef Jason Stevens was raised in Thailand Vietnam, when he honed his craft.

A favourite Blogger of ours, Darren Barefoot uses this technique on his blog when he needed to correct a grammatical error that changed how he meant to use his sentence.

Other bloggers may use italics, bold font, or make notes at the top or bottom of the post to make all kinds of corrections.  The strikethrough style, however, has the advantage of letting you indicate the original error.  That being said, the strikethrough's use for corrections has changed.  In modern blogging vernacular, the strikethrough is often use to make a tongue-in-cheek correction to a sentence where a 'typo' was actually intended to make a point.  In that example, consider:

Chef Jason Stevens was raised in Vietnam, when he honed his craft in  being a food wizard high-end asian fusion.

Making a correction while keeping the original error is always considered best - unless the error in questions was considered libellous, slanderous, or is causing legal issues - rather than simply changing the text to make it seem that the error never occurred.

You can handle corrections to blog posts in two ways:

Expanding on the original:  If you want to change your mind about something, or need to expand further on what you've previously said, sometimes it's better to do so in the original post than a new one.  Updating the original ensures your first words are associated with the update and that people are likely to read the update along with the original.

There are two ways styles for updating.  For important updates that might change the meaning or intention of a post, many bloggers choose to add an addendum at the end of the original post under the heading UPDATE.  For updates that expand on the original, or when new facts become available, many bloggers choose to use a labeled update at the bottom of the post.  Some bloggers preface the additional content with the acronym ETA,meaning Edited to Add.

Start a new post: When you really, really mess things up, you might want to post a new blog explaining what went wrong and how you plan to avoid similar mistakes in the future, or just as a way to clarify the situation.  This isn't always necessary, but it can go along way to making amends with readers and re-establishing your credibility.  It's also a great way to apologize, if necessary.  

If you need to start a new post to explain a mistake in an old post, it's best to link to the offending original content and edit the old post to add a link to the new one, so all readers will get a chance to see the details.  

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