Editorial standards

A hands-on take on something new can be either; it depends how deep it goes.

• News: a quick first test right after a release. “I tried it on my workflow, and here's what I saw.”
• Article: a thorough evaluation weeks later. “How it changed our SEO audits: the setup and the results.”

Still unsure? If the headline needs a version number to make sense, it's news.

1. What happened. The facts, with the version, the date, and a link to the primary source.
2. Why it matters for marketers. Our angle: what it changes for people who build marketing systems. Without this part it’s a rewrite of the announcement, and we don’t publish those.
3. What to do. The next step, with links to the article or topic that goes deeper.

We publish at a pace we can keep: two good news posts a week beats seven thin ones.

• It starts from something we actually built, ran or tested, not from a press release.
• It shows the work: the setup, the steps, the result, and what broke along the way.
• It stays current: when a tool changes, we update it in place and show the date, instead of publishing a new one.

News brings readers in. Articles are what they stay for.

• Every news post ends with links to the articles and the topic that go deeper.
• When a story keeps mattering, we write the article and link it from the news post.
• In the weekly email, an article leads and the week's news follows as a short roundup.

• Facts come from primary sources: release notes, documentation, pricing pages, and our own runs.
• Every number is checked against its source, and every news post names the version and the date.
• When we tested something ourselves, we say what we tested it on and how.

When we get something wrong, we fix it and note at the end what changed and when. We don't quietly rewrite. Updates that aren't corrections show an “Updated” date. Spotted a mistake? Email zev@esy.com.

We write about AI tools, and we use them: for research, first drafts and images, mostly through Esy's own workflows and Claude. A person reviews, tests and signs off every piece, and AI images say so in their captions.

Esy, clip.art and SEOPage are ours. When a piece is about one of them, or uses one as the example, we say so. We don't take payment to cover a product or to rank it.

• Plain words. Say what a tool does and what it did for us, without hype.
• Write for the reader: what they can do after reading.
• American spelling, and one idea per sentence where we can.