Thanks for nothing, HTML

Learning to write code - any code, even as simple as basic HTML - is like finally being let into a secret society. It's like suddenly realizing that the reason you don't understand anyone around you is that you speak English, and they all speak French. It's a eureka moment. There's a language in those shiny LCD heads of theirs!

For many of us who wrote high school papers on three-hole looseleaf, only to arrive at college to discover the internet, much about the Interwebs remains a mystery. We're young enough that we're expected to know it - intimately - but we're sadly just on the wrong side of that fence. As a professional writer and editor, tech is a daunting part of what will increasingly be my career. Merde!

Thanks to easy-to-use editorial content management systems (I'm looking at you, Red Dot), I've largely been spared the horrors of true coding. But around the world, many editors aren't so lucky, and the smarter among us should probably learn to build and maintain simple websites from the ground up. (Now I'm looking at you, intergovernmental field offices.) That's why I'm learning the ropes. And it's kinda fun! Try it out on a silly blog or homepage. You can start with blogger, wordpress or tumblr templates and go from there - or cut and paste code from other sites you like.

Welcome to the skull and bones, writers!