Starting a Post

I usually start writing a post just like that. As if I was explaining it to someone in front of me.

But there is a better way to start a post, i.e. by formulating the thing you want to explain in the post into a question. This will grab the attention of the reader straight away.

For example, I am about to write an SSIS issue that happens when we import an Excel file containing a numeric column. The issue is: if the first 10 rows of that column is blank, Excel will import all rows of that column as blank.

I could start the usual way by explaining the issue (what happened), why it happened and what the solution is. I still think that is a good way to write it. But a better way to start the article is to formulate the issue into a question: Why SSIS imports a numeric column in Excel as null?

So that’s what I’m going to do in the next post.