DZone's Article Types

The DZone website supports nine different article types. There are shared elements between them, but they all serve a different purpose for the audience. 

News

News articles talk about current events at a high level. They cover the who, what, where, when, and why of a given topic. News articles can be written about topics like new versions of software, developments in enterprise environments, or other similar events.

The key factor of a news piece is timeliness. News has a shelf life. If a post could wait a month, it’s probably not news. It could be, but the more useful an article is for the long-term, the more likely it is to be an analysis piece. 

NOTE: We do not publish press releases. If something is news, it should be about a topic, not just announcing a release or update.

Examples of News Articles

• EC Rejects Jigsaw
• This Week in Spring series
• IBM Open Sources Power9

Tutorial

Tutorials impart practical knowledge that helps someone accomplish a task. They could teach about formatting code, implementing a methodology like Agile, or showing off how to use some tool or framework. In short, tutorials teach people how to do things. 

Examples of Tutorials

• Java String Format Examples
• CSS Position: Relative vs. Absolute
• Spring Boot and PostgreSQL

Opinion

Opinion articles attempt to persuade the reader to embrace a certain point of view. They are trying to convince the reader that something inherently unprovable is right. The author may bring data or other evidence in to support their point, but at the end of the day, they are making a claim that can’t be proved for certain.

It is worth noting that an in-depth analysis of something that uses benchmarks or other proof that their point is correct is more of an analysis piece. Similarly, if it’s about a specific tool then the article is a review. 

Examples of Opinion Pieces

• Docker Is Dead
• Where I Think Agile Is Headed
• How DevOps Can Turn You into a Superhero

Analysis

Analysis articles bring facts, figures, and research together to form an educated opinion or recommendation. For example, say an author is comparing SQL queries to see which one is the most effective. They can include benchmarks to show that one is definitively better than the other, at least in certain situations. What separates analysis articles from tutorials is that an analysis piece is generally trying to help the reader decide between a few competing ideas, whereas a tutorial is an instructional article. 

Analyses and reviews are also very similar. The main difference between them is that an analysis is broader — focusing on something that isn’t vendor-specific. Reviews are about specific tools or software, whereas an analysis might be about entire industries.

 Examples of Analyses

• The Importance of Web Performance Benchmarking
• A Comprehensive Guide to REST vs SOAP
• Why CI Isn’t Improving Software (Yet)

Review

Reviews are like analysis pieces, but of specific tools, frameworks, books, or other media. To be a review, a specific person, company, or open-source maintainer should own, operate, or maintain what’s being talked about. For example, benchmarking SQL vs. NoSQL databases would be an analysis piece because no one owns the concept of NoSQL and there are a million SQL implementations out there. Meanwhile, benchmarking MongoDB and talking about its effectiveness would be a review.

 Like with analysis pieces, reviews should offer readers a suggestion or an informed opinion.

 Examples of Reviews

• Confused by AWS Storage Options? S3, EBS, and EFS Explained
• Comparing 11 IoT Development Platforms

Presentation

Presentations are what we call multimedia content on DZone. Presentations include instructional videos, podcasts, slideshows, infographics, or anything that isn’t strictly a traditional text/image-based article. Even if a video is a live-coding event where someone is showing readers specifically how to do something, it’s still a presentation rather than a tutorial. The only exception is if an article is a video or audio interview. Then it is an interview, as defined at the bottom of this document. 

Style note:  Put a tag in your title that lists the kind of presentation you are including in your post. 

Examples include:

• [Video]
• [Podcast]
• [Slides] or [Slideshow]

Examples of Presentations

• Any episode of Tom’s Tech Notes
• Webinar #7: Scrum Sprint Anti-Patterns
• Java Is in Tents

Code Snippets

Code snippets are brief little bits of code to help developers solve a problem. They are basically miniature tutorials. They should still have an introduction explaining what exactly the snippet is for and when to use it, but otherwise meant to be small tidbits of helpful info.

Style note: Code snippets should all have either the [Snippet] or, if there are multiple snippets, [Snippets] tag in the headline.

Examples of Code Snippets

• How to Capitalize the First Letter of a String in JavaScript
• Enabling CORS in Node.js
• How to Manage a Docker Swarm Cluster

Interviews

Interviews are articles that detail a conversation between an interviewer and either one or many sources. They can be podcasts, videos, or just plain text. If an interview has many sources in it, then ends with the author making a recommended course of action or some other suggestion, then it is probably an analysis piece, rather than an interview. However, if the sources in the interview are each making their own recommendations, it is an interview, not an analysis.

 Examples of Interviews

• The PyDev of the Week series
• The Women in DevOps series

Please leave a comment with any questions or suggestions you may have about our supported article types. 

Additional Resources

DZone's Article Submission Guidelines

The Official DZone Style Guide

How to Submit a Post to DZone

What Is Plagiarism? How to Avoid It and Cite Sources

How to Format Articles for DZone

Turning a Press Release Into a Tutorial