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| Count9 China. August 20 2012 04:32. Posts 3696 | Profile Blog # |
So I've been browsing the internet for a long time and recently I've noticed how annoyed I am by people typing unnecessary shit in their posts. Not the ones that add flair and inject personality - the people who add unnecessary adverbs or awkward vocabulary words to try and sound eloquent or sophisticated and only accomplish wordiness.
What happened to the AP style structures where you talk about the most relevant stuff first then add back story and fluff? It tells you the information and if you're only interested in that then you can stop reading after the third paragraph. If the article happened to hook you in and you want to find out more or there were points of interest you weren't clear about then you read on for more information, it's an amazing structure.
Way too few people who have been taught this, presumably, in school uses it on the internet and it makes me want to stab my eyes out figuratively. Everyone seems to have the catchy yet clear title thing down, especially the girl blogs, but too few people write with any structure at all save chronological. If you want to tell me about this cool thing you did with your cat then tell that story in the first paragraph. The stuff about how you picked him up at the adoption home because as you walked by his cage a halo of light illuminated the room and a choir of angels singing hallelujah descended from the heavens in later sections, not before the main point. Also an interesting story but not the one I was interested in reading when I clicked the title link. On that note, what happened to bolding and bullet points? So many things can be better and more concisely expressed as bullet points with bolding than paragraph structure. This has directly lead to the novels people like to write - also know as wall of texts when they fail to hit enter - and especially annoying is a tldr summary at the bottom. If you structure your OP well then a tldr shouldn't be necessary.
Or, as a lot of effective writers, particularly some staffed by teamliquid, do is use bolding and different colors as the in text tldr. But that only works if the topic sentence actually hits every topic. Remember how topic sentences (plural, don't believe that bull they give you in middle school that there's one topic sentence) had to hit every single topic you planned on talking about with a little bit of elaboration as how it related to your overall point? Unfortunately many of you don't. I'm not a stickler for grammar, or spelling, or, believe it or not, structure, despite me going on and on about it; I just wish more people would write more effectively because it's a joy to be a reader of effective writers. I mean, imagine if I had made this blog post in a better format and how much fun it would've been to read. Ultimately hoping for any change is, and I realize this, futile so I guess I'm just venting.
I guess this is particularly annoying because it's international. I understand language barriers leads to suspect English at times but everyone can easily repair how they write and should, at the high school level or above, be effective writers but I just can't find it anywhere.
As some examples, and not calling anyone out, just the blogs below mine: (skipping 2 cause one was low content and one was a literal blog so chronological made sense)
#1:
Title: Orb Deserves a second chance
Me: Ok, why does orb deserve a second chance?
Body:
Hello everyone I am a long time fan of brood war , now watching starcraft 2 .
One of the commentators that got my attention was Orb .
I watch him every time I am on teamliquid , which is at least 2 or 3 times per week .
I only watch esl tv when he casts .
After a while I realized that giving the high quality of his commentaries he has a very low
number of viewers .
Then through the thread in liquid i found out about what he did while he was laddering .
I also heard him comment about the subject several times during his streaming .
And today something happened : while he was laddering on his orb account at around 11:30 AM GMT+2 time, some jack ass in the ladder taunted him in the game chat : "say the word n***** ".
And even though orb was obviously affected , all he did was kept his cool , won the game through a failed cheese of his opponent , and made no comments .
I know what he did back then was wrong , he knows it's wrong , and today, to me, he proved that he deserves a second chance .
I hope this helps him even if it's just by a little bit .
Everything I bolded has nothing to do with why he deserves a second chance. A single bullet point that said, I saw him on stream today where he kept his cool against someone using abusive language and it clearly shows he has learned would've been so much better.
#2
Title: Girl Blog [Happy]
Me: Dawwwwww, y u hapy?
Body:
So I dated this girl 3.5 years ago. It didn't work out because of timing and other crazy circumstances I won't go into detail about. I fell for her so hard and when it didn't work it absolutely crushed me. I didn't date anyone for over a year after that.
Fast forward to 3 weeks ago. I randomly found her on facebook (she didn't have one at the time) and added her. We decided to catch up for lunch the other day. It was like we had never been apart. Great conversation for 5 or 6 hours and it felt like 10 minutes. Met up again tonight for a movie. When I kissed her at the end of the night it was like my whole body was on fire and I'm pretty sure she felt it too. It's not often a person gets a second chance at a missed opportunity and I intend to make the most of it. Whether it works out this time or not at least I know I am not going to have any regrets about it.
I see her again on Tuesday. Haven't been this excited for anything in a very long time.
Again, not really relevant. I just want to read the heart warming story about a boy in love, starting with how through facebook a young boy and a lost love met and spent an excellent date together would've been amazing. Talk about how/why the first break up happens at the end, not the beginning.
#3
Title: My friend is voting for Romney
Me: Interesting, wonder what his reasoning is and why you are conflicted with your friend
Body:
So lately I try to avoid political issues as they don't really interest me anymore, but hearing one of my friends share their opinion and as to why they're going to vote for Romney really irked me.
First of all, I'd like to describe my friend. He's not rich, nor particularly smart, nor overachieving. I'd say he's above average, but I could also be wrong on that (he's said some pretty dumb stuff in the past). He's still going to school as a business major, yet has not really managed to achieve anything nor even made ventures out into the real world. However, despite this, despite not knowing his own limitations he believes he's capable of being successful. Now, that's a broad term so let me clarify it a bit. I mean successful in the sense that if he tries he can become a multi-millionaire running his own business, work from the bottom up from humble beginnings, buy his whole family a mansion, retire at 50 if he so wishes, pretty much the whole sha-bang.
Now let me say something at this point of my blog. Life is not simply about you vs. yourself. It's not a single player campaign where you just grind and eventually you'll beat that boss, get the loot, and sit back and watch the credits roll. Some people are born smarter, faster, in better environments. There's limitations involved as well as luck. Meeting the right people, being at the right place at the right time, etc.
That's NOT saying working hard doesn't help. Working hard will let you reach what you're capable of reaching. What we're each capable of reaching is a different story. It's just that some people have to work much harder than others to get the same thing.
Can I ask how many of the millionaires in the world achieved their status through their own determination alone? Romney certainly wasn't one of them. Maybe it's because of popular idols like Bill Gates (although he didn't exactly come from a middle class family and went to community college) that people believe that it doesn't matter where we come from or if we dropped out of college. I mean, no one wants to hear the other thousands of stories about some rich guy who was a son of a rich guy who inherited a bunch of money, right?
That leads me back to another misnomer, perhaps one more related to the title. The fact that people voting for Romney don't believe in having the rich pay more than they do in taxes after all the loopholes and lobbying. That they "deserve" their money because they earned it and it somehow ended up in their bank accounts. Well yes, it's hard to argue that it is indeed in their possession legally (or maybe not). But come on. Are you going to sit here and tell me that those people are somehow worth thousands of times more than the next person? What if someone walked into your school and said "hey, I'm worth more than every single teacher in here combined". Would you nod your head and agree? Did they work harder than the guy who is working 60 hours a week in multiple jobs so that their children can maybe have some resemblance of a fair start that they never had? Are they more intelligent than the engineers who make things that, as far as most of the population is concerned, is done through magic?
Pure capitalism isn't fair. If it weren't for regulation we could all end up being slaves for what some people care. It's the people at the top who set the rules, who set their own wages and everyone else's.
Sorry if this is a bit of a depressing/liberal blog, but the sheer fact that 40% of people believe that, and that one of them happens to be a friend of mine was too annoying to ignore. Hell, I didn't even touch on "job creationism" and how people still put their faith in the same people who are outsourcing jobs or creating awful dead end minimum wage jobs.
I didn't highlight anything cause this whole blog is wtf. I still have no idea what his friend's opinion is, just shit the OP hates and I assume some of it is his friend's opinion? I guess? Maybe? And how exactly did your friend describe it? Because frequent use of words like "The fact that people voting for Romney" implies not your friend's personal view but just a widely held belief. I really wanted to read about the personal problems you guys have and his unique views that you disagree with that might make some sense, not just bashing "people who vote for Romney" with sensationalist strawmans and broad generalizations. The blog wasn't titled "Why I'm not voting for Romney" after all.Last edit: 2012-08-20 04:55:46
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| marttorn Norway. August 20 2012 04:36. Posts 5023 | Profile Blog # |
his cage a halo of light illuminated his cage and a choir of angels singing hallelujah descended from the heavens
wtf have you been stalking me |
| | So far as we can determine, peanut butter has no effect on the rotation of the earth. | |
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| Count9 China. August 20 2012 04:40. Posts 3696 | Profile Blog # |
On August 20 2012 04:36 marttorn wrote:
Show nested quote +his cage a halo of light illuminated his cage and a choir of angels singing hallelujah descended from the heavens
wtf have you been stalking me
No interest in you, lots of interest in your cat :O |
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| marttorn Norway. August 20 2012 05:18. Posts 5023 | Profile Blog # |
On August 20 2012 04:40 Count9 wrote:
Show nested quote +On August 20 2012 04:36 marttorn wrote:
his cage a halo of light illuminated his cage and a choir of angels singing hallelujah descended from the heavens
wtf have you been stalking me
No interest in you, lots of interest in your cat :O
Yeah I know she's weird.
On a more serious note, I agree with most of everything you said in the blog. A lot of blogs I find are overly cluttered with irrelevant stuff, and it's not tempting nor fun to read any of it. |
| | So far as we can determine, peanut butter has no effect on the rotation of the earth. | |
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| TheBigO United States. August 20 2012 05:23. Posts 56 | Profile # |
I have honestly never thought about this before, but I do sometimes notice how akward it is to read a post. Yet, I do somewhat think it doesn't matter for a few reasons.
First, it is just a blog. A blog just allows people to rant about their ideas and opinions. The good bloggers put down an interesting idea, maybe link you to a nice song to listen to in the background, and has a funny picture or two. Their goal isn't to use a complicated structure, but to put something done to make the readers laugh or quickly think about an idea.
Secondly, most people aren't good enough at writing to use that kind of structure. It is normal to have, the as you put it, "unecessary shit in their post." Most people are not gifted writers. As such, they will make mistakes. As a reader, I just glance over it and move on. I know there is going to be substance in the blog somewhere.
Finally, and most importantly, this is not AP Style writing. This is true both for the writer and for the reader. As a reader, I am not trying to find the hidden meaning to a blog. I am not trying to see the symbolism or the allusions or anything else. I just want to be midly entertained by a blog I read in 5 minutes, and maybe look at the first page of comments. Blog writers don't normally spend hours upon hours with their blogs. They are not being graded. They don't care if some people who they will most likely never meet in life dislike their writing. It is a blog. It is informal. Who cares?
Overall, I think you are getting annoyed over an issue that doesn't matter. Different types of writing are different. When I read "AP level writing" or write "on an AP level," I will put the time and effort to do it. When I am reading or writing a blog, I will put less time and effort because it is more casual and relaxed. I know this post is probably a little hard to understand and not the most clear, but hey, its a blog. This is the style of blogs, and blogs like this are here to stay  . |
| | I really need a better quote... but I have no ideas :( . |
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| xxpack09 United States. August 20 2012 06:09. Posts 1798 | Profile Blog # |
| I heavily disagree with your criticisms of the girl blog, as the point of a girl blog is to tell a story/narrative. If your writing goal is to try to make a point or be instructive, then yes, the writing standards you are looking for are appropriate, but they don't work at all for a lot of blogs. |
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| Takkara United States. August 20 2012 06:24. Posts 1439 | Profile Blog # |
I don't think you've done a good enough job OP of explaining why the AP style standard is the objectively best standard for blog posts. It's not just de facto the best or most effective writing style. This is especially true when the blogs are not meant to be persuasive or informative. Story blogs, as some people have already mentioned, would not be well served to start with the punchline and build up the background.
Each post should be effectively constructed to match its purpose. Some might be conversational, some informative, some persuasive, others are for entertainment. To advocate putting only one structural frame over all blogs is a bit heavy-handed. |
| | Gee gee gee gee baby baby baby |
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| Amaterasu1234 United States. August 20 2012 06:32. Posts 317 | Profile # |
| 5 Stars. Agreed wholeheartedly, particularly with your examples. And here I thought I was writing the wrong way :/ |
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 babylon August 20 2012 07:58. Posts 6231 | Profile Blog # |
| Writing can't and shouldn't be measured by one person's (or one school of thought's) criteria. People write for different purposes, and their delivery should match their goals. |
| | [insert StarTale icon here] |
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| Fishgle United States. August 20 2012 09:56. Posts 1582 | Profile Blog # |
On August 20 2012 07:58 babylon wrote:
Writing can't and shouldn't be measured by one person's (or one school of thought's) criteria. People write for different purposes, and their delivery should match their goals.
what if their delivery is bad and doesn't fit any goal? |
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| nohbrows United States. August 20 2012 10:40. Posts 583 | Profile # |
The Associated Press style of writing (also known as the inverted triangle) was designed for news writing. Articles with the clear intention to inform you of factual news in a concise manner. You cannot apply the AP Style to everything. It just doesn't work that way. As one journalism educator said at a workshop: "Sometimes, we overuse the AP style."
Blogs are not news articles.
That being said, I can see the root of your complaints, which is that writing often lacks structure and flow. Yes. A lot of blogs and/or posts on Teamliquid are guilty of this.
But at the same time, you must also think about whether or not you are unable to see anything BUT what you want to see in structure. Why should the girl blog put his first break up story at the end? Maybe he wanted to provide some context in the beginning? Because maybe if he didn't put the fact that he broke up with his girlfriend prior, the entire thing about him dating her again and then kissing her and etc., etc. would have lost all emotional impact. We wouldn't known why it he was so happy about kissing her until after the blog post had ended, which by that time it is too late and the emotional impact of reading that paragraph there and then would have been lost. Could he have executed it better? Yes. But is it wrong for him to write his blog post out like that? No, I don't think so.
Edit:
On August 20 2012 09:56 Fishgle wrote:
Show nested quote +On August 20 2012 07:58 babylon wrote:
Writing can't and shouldn't be measured by one person's (or one school of thought's) criteria. People write for different purposes, and their delivery should match their goals.
what if their delivery is bad and doesn't fit any goal?
I am pretty if it reaches that kind of level of bad, it is just known as bad writing. Last edit: 2012-08-20 10:41:25 |
| | Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable~~ |
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| babylon August 20 2012 10:47. Posts 6231 | Profile Blog # |
On August 20 2012 09:56 Fishgle wrote:
Show nested quote +On August 20 2012 07:58 babylon wrote:
Writing can't and shouldn't be measured by one person's (or one school of thought's) criteria. People write for different purposes, and their delivery should match their goals.
what if their delivery is bad and doesn't fit any goal?
Then it's just bad.
Unless they mean for the delivery to be bad/incomprehensible, in which case it fits their goal just fine, even though I might personally dislike it. |
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| nohbrows United States. August 20 2012 11:08. Posts 583 | Profile # |
On August 20 2012 10:47 babylon wrote:
Show nested quote +On August 20 2012 09:56 Fishgle wrote:
On August 20 2012 07:58 babylon wrote:
Writing can't and shouldn't be measured by one person's (or one school of thought's) criteria. People write for different purposes, and their delivery should match their goals.
what if their delivery is bad and doesn't fit any goal?
Then it's just bad. Unless they mean for the delivery to be bad/incomprehensible, in which case it fits their goal just fine, even though I might personally dislike it.
They could just call it post-modern and get away with it XD
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| | Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable~~ |
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