But at what point does it become no longer "blog" and just generic "content"?
Personally, I'd strongly insist that the whole point of blogs was to do whatever the fuck you want.
Because that was the point when they emerged: they democratized publishing the way the internet democratized the share and spread of information on a worldwide scale.
For better *AND* (you better believe) worse.
Now, if you're concerned about reach, engagement, monetization, etc., well that's a related but absolutely distinct discussion.
This doesn't have to be about making your writing more generic. Both Mark Twain and George Orwell wrote about the need to be concise when writing, and you'd be hard-pressed to describe either of them as generic.
For me, I write a blog because I want to communicate what I'm thinking to other people. If I didn't, I'd just write a journal and keep it next to my bed. Therefore the effectiveness (and affectiveness) of that communication is important to me. In my experience, doing that well means being concise, having a clear structure, and a lot of the other pieces of advice in this post.
The primary goal of any aspiring writer on any medium should first and foremost be to write.
Recommending certain guidelines or approaches is certainly fine. Self-reflection and self-improvement is usually an admirable goal but not at the cost of just doing the damn thing.
And, frankly, invoking seasoned professional authors is just silly when the topic is amateur blogging.
And let's not pretend unwarranted criticism—or even just unnecessary expectations—so often just ends up being unhelpful and literally counterproductive or, much worse, a form of gatekeeping.
The best way to practice writing is to write, but that doesn't mean that the writing is the goal. I write to communicate, and if you haven't understood what I've written, then I've not met my goal. That's true even if it was still very good practice to write out those words.
I agree with you that unwarranted criticism is unhelpful, and I agree that in blogging, we shouldn't hold others to higher standards than they wish to be held. If you've found a form of writing that brings you joy, then carry on and enjoy it.
But at least for myself, I want to keep on improving in my writing. That's why I (aspirationally) try and learn from great writers like Orwell and Twain, and why I find advice like this useful. I know I'm never going to do this professionally, and I'm quite happy to enjoy writing as a thing for me and me alone, but part of that enjoyment will always be pushing myself to write better.
It sounds like you're making the kind of choices that will undoubtedly hone your writing, and for that I sincerely commend you. (This is certainly an area I could improve in myself.)
A concern I have would be that someone is too eagerly trying to employ a formula that they perceive—or have been told—exists and never develop their own style. Never experimenting or trying new things. Then conclude that they aren't not a good writer and have failed, when they simply never found their own voice, which then sparked something in them and others.
Some of the most notable bloggers I can think of that I have repeatedly come back and read time and again—even ones whose writing style I don't particularly care for but whose views I find compelling and a unique contribution to a given topic of conversation—each of them notably has a very particular, distinctive, and typically consistent voice that they blog in.
> invoking seasoned professional authors is just silly when the topic is amateur blogging
It's all communication. Obviously there is nothing wrong with someone blogging haphazardly, just as there is nothing wrong with writing a web app in Brainfuck.
You're not explicitly saying to dumb it down, but I'd be curious if this advice would scale to genuinely deep content.
The cynical hypothesis is that people don't want to think about what you wrote, and if you put enough pretty pictures and big fonts that even people who didn't pay much attention will have a good time.
I'd be curious if perhaps a seminal blog post (e.g. one of PG's) could be rewritten in this style without sounding reductive and oversimplified.
Most blog posts are not deep content though. Even from people that might be considered experts on the topic they are writing about. Deep content is still more the arena of whitepapers/e-books/conference presentations.
There are many people, myself included, who have tried every piece of writing advice under the sun, and it's still hit or miss, mostly miss. Writing is especially hard because it's impossible to predict what will turn the reader off even if meticulous care is taken. It's similar to opsec in that even when every precaution is taken there may still be holes you failed to anticipate but is obvious to the attacker.
It is dumbing down. Let's not dance around that particular bush. Shorter sentences and words with fewer syllables is why mainstream media has a following. Simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses.
So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a blog. It's terrible if you actually want to write.
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” -- Mark Twain
No form of writing benefits from purposefully making it longer and harder to read. You might be writing about complex topics, but you still want to strive towards simplicity. As simple as possible, but no simpler.
There’s a difference between making something needlessly complicated and just using meaningful words for the task at hand. The difference between someone who writes eloquently and someone who just writes well, one might say.
Maybe no form of _non-fiction_ writing benefits from it, but that's not the only type of writing there is. Let me link a clip from Dead Poets Society regarding this: https://youtu.be/WfZu-Um9PV0?feature=shared
The poetry I like is by nature beautiful. Beauty is not created by taking a thesaurus and shaking it upside-down over your keyboard.
Are you morose? Perhaps you are sad, very sad in fact, but find that you are neither glum nor morose, not disheartened nor heartbroken, not anguished nor stricken, not unsure of how you will go on nor distressed, and neither grieved nor aggrieved nor yet maddened with grief. Perhaps your feelings of sadness are to be expressed quietly and without intruding.
That's absolutely true. I would like them used in an intentional way, though.
If you just slap them down anywhere then you end up with a sentence like "Obscurantist verbiage is a calling card of the intellectual qua gatekeeper, in that necessary role serving to further the creeping and not unimpenetrable calcification of human linguistic torture" and anyone who has to read your writing will wish you were dead, which is bad, or copy you, which is worse.
Yeah, well the time? Plenty of sites dedicated to that. You get feedback on your writing quickly, although if it's serialized there's some drawbacks for pacing.
Writing simpler and shorter sentences doesn't always mean you are dumbing down. Before my tech/IT career, I had plans to be a lawyer and majored in Philosophy.
People might find it surprising that students were explicitly told to write as simply as possible. I come to prefer this way of writing and its a clear benefit in written communication.
It looks like there are some assumptions on why someone would write a blog. If my goal was to get the most visibility with my blog, I would choose a simpler writing style because I think its the most efficient.
More long form or flowery prose can still be posted, if that is what your audience is looking for.
The point of a blog is, more often than not, to communicate something. It’s not a writing exercise. If writing using a simple style helps you communicate to more people more easily then that’s a win.
Also, “simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses” is a terrible way to look at the current situation if you ask me.
Which is why my blog is a "writing exercise," as you put it. I believe people can be more engaged with their media, but it is admittedly easier to go for the slogan-style messaging nobody has to think too hard about. I dream of a world where everyone has valuable, well-considered input and I will continue to write as though I live in that world until we get there.
Asking someone who wants to practice the art of writing to do otherwise is no different than asking a painter to just make stick figures.
GP comment says that more often than not the blogger isn't an artist. I'd like to add that not only blog-sellers can benefit from the advice above: if someone is drawing an instruction manual, making an expressionist painting is counterproductive to the totally valid goal of conveying information as clearly as possible and in the most digestible manner. Stick to the stick figures if that's your goal.
And if you write primarily for the sake of writing, I don't think anyone is telling _you_ to change your approach in a way that doesn't fit _your_ goals. The advice are for others.
You're missing the point I'm trying to make and that's probably on me because I didn't explain it very clearly.
You wrote
> So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a blog. It's terrible if you actually want to write.
The advice has nothing to do with selling a blog—whatever that means—and more to do with communication. Writing, especially on the web, is more often than not a communication tool and not an exercise in rhetoric.
And the point of communication is to, well, communicate. Using complex language doesn't take you closer to that goal. If you write 4000 words when 200 can be used to convey the same message and the result is that fewer people end up reading what you wrote then your communication is not effective.
Now, if what you want is to write as an artistic expression then by all means write 4000 words or even 40000. That's totally fine and nobody is stopping you from doing that obviously.
You can have a very high level discussion with remarkably simple language. Plato was very good at this, but it's something you see in a lot of good communicators.
I remember I was struck reading a graduate level physics textbook co-authored by Feynman when I was a student. I was amazed how much clearer the language was than almost anything else I'd read at that level. It wasn't that it only used simple words, but it only used enough of them to be precise where precision was needed, and it took the time to introduce concepts even though they were expected to be known to the reader already, just as a refresher as to exactly what the discussion was about.
The clarity comes from the fact while we typically share opinions about what common and simple terms mean, we may have slightly different ideas associated with more complex words, especially with regards to intangible subjects. Plato's treatment of the concept of Justice is a good example of this. We all think we know what the word means, but to actually pin the meaning down is quite a task.
But honestly, Plato was dumbing it down, Feynman was dumbing it down, you should dumb it down too. A fundamental truth of communication is that you know the idea in your head better than your audience. You can't treat them as peers that understand what you are trying to say until you've clearly said it.
The problem in any communication is to get your idea across as vividly as possible.
I like your examples, but I disagree. Having also read Plato and many of the speculative writings that address his work, much of it is still up for debate, especially when context is not understood. Feynman, whom I enjoy as well, often said some really nonsensical things that he probably thought had a lot of philosophical depth (I think specifically of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out which is a nice feel-good piece but does not bring much meat to the table afterall). To be fair to him and your example, he did absolutely have a knack for breaking down scientific complexities to terms non-scientists could grasp, which I applaud. Yes, let's do more of that.
So, sure, there is a time where simpler language is an exercise in how well you know a thing. Being able to break it down into simpler terms makes sense. But we do have to be careful with the language. It's dynamic, as you mention, often subject to interpretation that could lead to misunderstanding or improper handling of an idea. I did it in my initial reply.
That said, one must know one's audience and subject, I think. Am I conveying a concept from physics to non-technical individuals who might not care what I have to say in the first place? Sure, simplify. Am I telling a story about a personal experience or some relatable problem in my field? Expect a detailed and nuanced picture to be painted.
Thanks for the comment, it gave me something to think about.
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." - Hemingway
I think a better wording would be to think of writing the same way as programming. It needs a certain level of complexity to be correct, but it should never have any more than strictly necessary.
I find the appeal to non-native speakers to be patronizing in itself. English is my fourth language and I understand long words and complex sentence structure just fine.
Not everyone's good at languages. I really appreciate it when people write simply, so I only have to look a few thousand words up in the dictionary to understand it.
I admit my phrasing was harsh, but I stand by it with a caveat that I could have expressed it better. I personally do not think of the masses as "simpletons," but I believe our media and product manufacturers most certainly do. There should have been a semi-colon between those two sentences, or something.
My own writing could use more work, but I suppose that is the point of practicing it as an art.
I can't tell if there is any emotion (sadness) associated with those rules, but I've found, sadly, that those and more apply to business email. It didn't use to be that way, but now that folks don't even know what bottom posting is, much less are able to discuss the merits:
- one idea per email
- exec summary must be first ... don't lay out a case then summarize at the end
- only 1 question per email
if it's more complex than that, you need to break it up into a kind of detective clue-hunting trap sequence, where you ask each question in turn, in a multiple exchange thread. never try to shortcut it / condense into a single message.
- it is acceptable for your signature to be multiples of the body size
My philosophy towards writing is remembering how I wrote the multitude of bullshit papers I was assigned in college classes and then doing the exact opposite.
The vast majority of things that I was told to write about were objectively uninteresting and SHOULD have been summarized in a paragraph or two. So I padded those babies out with long words, meandering and passive phrasing, tangents, definitions, and so forth. I don't think any teacher or professor ever directly called me out for obviously sacrificing quality for correctness. But in hindsight, I rather wish they had.
(There's probably a deeper story in here about how some parts of college actively prevent students from succeeding in real life.)
- Don't litter your piece with links. Readers often don't know where they lead, whether the linked information is important for understanding the article, and which links may be skipped safely. So each link will slow the reader down, and make it more likely that they stop reading the whole thing. Similar to an overly long piece.
Better:
- skip links that are not strictly necessary
- replace links with short explanations of the core idea of the linked article, if possible (i.e. don't link to Wikipedia if you can quickly explain the concept in a sentence)
- only include links in a way that makes it is clear what is explained in the link target, so readers know whether they even have to click on it or not
Use foot notes or margin note. I don’t mind links, but I open them in the backgroumd for further exploration, not while I’m reading the article. But foot notes work great for contextualization.
Even then I find myself often mentally substituting the bafflegab technobabble with the well-worn but still useful English words that would have clearly expressed exactly the same ideas to someone half a century ago. And likely still half a century hence.
- Shorter sentences
In general, you should aim to write sentences with 8-13 words each.
- Shorter words
You may think of this as "dumbing-down" your writing, but you don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of using.
- One idea per sentence
In other words, don't write non sequiturs.
- One concept per paragraph