I confess~the role of critic scares me just a little. I hesitate to set standards for others, particularly when I don't consider myself any kind of expert. However, during my blog hopping of the past 18 months, I have become aware of certain blog "attributes" that are off-putting.
- Clutter. I don't like "stuff" everywhere in my house, and I don't like it all over the page;
- Tiny type. My eyes are getting old - I need bigger letters!
- Overly long posts. My brain is getting old too. Keep things short and sweet;
- Wordiness. As William Zinsser advised us so well in his classic treatise On Writing Well-"Strip every sentence to its cleanest components" and "simplify";
- Straying from the subject. Stick to one topic per post. Write another post to deal with separate subjects;
- Lack of punctuation. Forgoing capital letters, sentence structure and paragraphing does not make you a more creative writer, it simply makes your writing more difficult to read;
- Commenting without linking. If you leave a comment, please leave a link to your blog so I can return the visit.
There. Most of these observations relate to basic rules of good writing. For me, they are the least appealing qualities in weblog writing.
Cruise down the cyber highway to Michele's to see what she has identified as her seven deadly blogging sins.
If you'd like to play, consider yourself tagged!
3 comments:
Nice job, Becca!
Smiles,
Michele
I like your list. Michele tagged me also, so I've been having fun tracking down all the different lists and reading them.
The lack of punctuation thing really gets to me, too!!
I was Michele's other victim and it's been really interesting seeing the various responses. :-)
I was surprised by your "commenting without linking" selection. Most people hate the idea of self-promotion within comments so it's interesting to meet someone who goes the other way.
I deliberately don't add links unless it's to something specific. Of course, our names should automatically connect to more information about us. :-)
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