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« Scrambled Eggheads | Main | Deer Porn » May 25, 2005The Elements of Blog StyleTo my knowledge, the blogosphere lacks its Dr. Strunk and Mr. White. Without it, we are all in the dark on the peculiarities of blogging style, for though blogging looks like writing, it is a very different creature. Consider this reprint of two ITA posts in the Evansville Courier and Press. Here, our blog posts have been reproduced in a static medium (as NRO puts it, on "dead tree"), and they become subtly different creatures. The difference is less distinct with Adam Packer's post on mascots, but it comes across clearly (to me, anyway) when my post on housing stock is put on paper. Without hyperlinking, the brief essay reads very differently. One of the beauties of blogging, after all, is the ease with which we bloggers can paint our pictures on the 'infinite canvass'--unlike print or television, our musings are unconstrained by time or space concerns, and we can link to as many full-text original sources as our readers can stand. (This process becomes almost invisible to the blog reader; please note, for instance, that I've already done so twice in this brief post.) Without the link to the original paper on housing stock, the Courier and Press readers rely on my summary to judge the argument--but my three equation-free paragraphs are hardly sufficient to convey the full meaning of the mathematical paper, which itself contains numerous references to other texts. All of this is lost on paper, as is the grace note of linking to a Reason writer grudgingly admitting that highly-regulated New York is nonetheless a desirable place to live. Blogging, then, requires different thinking about style than writing for a static, standalone medium. And trying to write good blog while also keeping the demands of print in the back of my mind is difficult--note, for instance, that the "presented here" in my online post survives into print, even though it serves absolutely no purpose on paper and probably confuses the reader. ("Presented where?") Online, it makes perfect sense. Offline, it's counterproductive. Posted by Paul Musgrave at May 25, 2005 03:27 PM CommentsGood points, Paul. Another apt example: my reference to the "quite cowardly-looking" Roman warrior loses its impact when the reader can't link to the warrior to see that he appears to be shrinking back from an approaching danger, with his eyes squinted or closed. There is no need to put my written description of the warrior in the original post because it is not necessary with the link embedded, but the C & P reader has no way of confirming that the new warrior symbol looks like a coward, neither through my absent description nor by linking to the picture. Posted by: Adam Packer at May 25, 2005 04:53 PM | permalink Post a comment |
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