Chronosynclastic Infundibulum

Blogging has come a long way in the past 5 years or so. I was pleasently surprised when one of links returned by google news on a particular news item was infact a blog! Blogging has become so ubiquitous that google is testing out a new search service dedicate to blogs alone. Almost every other person I know has a blog, or has friends who have blogs. It has never been easier to produce and consume (mis?)information. I think I speak for a vast majority of bloggers when I say that their sacred objective to attract as many readers as possible to their blogs. I know of people who send instant messages to everyone on their buddy list for every new post they write. I have received emails from bloggers asking me to visit their blog and comment on a new post they have written. The competition is pretty intense. Each one of us has only so much time to spare and we have countless bloggers trying to get our attention and get us to read their blogs. The natural question to ask is, “What can be done to get more people to read your blog?”. (Please bear in mind that this is different from asking how one can increase the traffic to his/her blog. Increased readership is one of the causes for increased traffic, and not the other way ’round.)

I scoured theblogs to see if people have written about this already, and I found a few interesting links; ProBlogger.net has an invited people to participate in a group writing project titled “X habits of highly effective bloggers“, successful-blog.com talks about “6+1 Traits of Effective Blog Writing“, the Webby Awards have a handful of categories dedicated to bloggers, Booksquare talks about their entry to the ProBlogger invite here, there is another entry about the same from Retrospector. I read all of them, and they are all nice and dandy except for a major omission. None of them talk about the importance of writing itself. Successful-blog.com comes the closest; the author has devoted three bullet points and three sentences to the actual writing skill involved, but thats just about it. I think its time someone wrote about the the actual ‘writing’ bit, and here’s my 2 cents’ worth.

If you are not inclined to read this long post, click here for the highlights :)
Audience:
The most important aspect of effective writing is identifying the target audience. For instance, in case of this blog post, the target audience is the community of bloggers. More specifically this post is tailored for the bloggers who maintain blogs for the purpose of dissemination of information and opinions and views. Bloggers who use their blog as a literary outlet, or practice sessions of creative writing are less likely to find this post useful. The importance of identifying the audience cannot be understated because it will determine both your style of writing, and the kind of readers you are likely to attract. Let us consider a blog that is dedicated to providing its readers with quick and simple scripts and html hacks to cool all the ‘cool’ stuff. The suggested target audience would all the casual users of the internet who have an interest in developing and maintaining their website/blog but are not a html or web wiz. So it doesnt matter how much you know about javescript or about the minute specific technical details of how different web browsers render different html codes. You are going to keep it simple. If you cannot keep your readers’ attention past the first 50 words, then you have lost them. They are not coming back.

Objective:
This may seem obvious enough, but still requires to be stressed upon. Be clear about the objective of your blog/blogpost. If you do not know why you are writing something, then your audience will not know what you are talking about, or will not find anything useful in what you have to say.

Consider the following example taken from a blog:

If A bears a relation to B, and B bears the same relation to C, then A bears it to C.
For e.g. If A is smarter than B, and B is smarter than C, then A is smarter than C.
That’s the law of transitivity for you. Simple? So how does this seemingly simple law apply to the complicated vagaries of office life? Let’s take a very common instance in which many of us might have had the misfortune of being involved.
A’s life depends on a particular project ==> For this, his junior colleague B needs to get him some info right away ==> B can’t get this info until C compliles it all first ==> C needs data from D before he can compile it all ==> D depends on E ==> E on F ==> and so on and so forth ====>
The point is, our friend A remains stuck until the final link in the chain has done his bit. Like a jailbird awaiting his final verdict, each hapless link sits and waits for fate to decide whether he gets the axe or not!
If any one link in the chain doesn’t do his bit, all the links before him start to weaken and collapse.
F gets axed by E ==> E by D ==> D by C ==> C by B ==> B gets axed by A ==> who in turn gets axed by the guy above him ==> and it goes on and on and on ====>
The longer this chain, the higher the chances are of it breaking somewhere in the middle. = = = = //~ ~ ~ ~>

This post makes an interesting point, but it also illustrates a lack of objective. Why is the author talking about it? The only means at the author’s disposal is the post itself, but the post fails to deliver.

K.I.S.S.:
Keep It Simple Stupid; I know you have heard this a million times before, but it helps in reiterating it here. Always, be simple direct and concise. Remember, you are not here to impress anyone with your vocabulary skills, or the ability to write insanely long compound sentences.

All it does is obfuscate the quintessential desideratum of the post .
It makes the purpose of the post unclear.

The above two sentences carry the same meaning; the choice of the sentence as the preferred one is left as an excercise to the reader.

Sentence Style:

Here are a few tips on how to compose sentences that readers will appreciate

1. Watch sentence length.
2. Keep subjects and verbs close together.
3. Omit verbiage; use concrete verbs.
4. Write squeaky clean prose.
5. Avoid ponderous language.
6. Avoid excessive use of is/are verb forms
7. Use active voice for clarity.

Blogposts with long sentences are difficult to read. Keep the length of sentences to less than 20 words as much as possible. See the following example:

Before

My manager handed me a report the other day that contained a brief discussion of certain technical and non-technical aspects of my project, but did not talk about individual responsibilities at all and in fact parts of it were factually incorrect. The report was written by people who I believe are qualified, although their expertise in the technical area is questionable.

After

My manager handed me a report that contained a brief discussion of certain technical and non-technical aspects of my project. The report did not talk about individual responsibilities at all. In fact, parts of it were factually incorrect. The report seems to be prepared by qualified people. However, their expertise in the technical area is questionable.

Here is an open secret for sentence clarity: Keep the subject of the sentence and the verbs together. The more verbs in a sentence, the sharper and more direct the sentence.
Example :

John loves Mary because she inherited money

verses

Mary’s inheritence of money was one of the reasons for John’s interest in Mary

Avoid verbiage; avoid use of more words when fewer can do the job. Example:

Here is a list of two-word phrases where just one one word will do: Absolutely Free, Complete Absence, Exactly Identical etc. When you can do with fewer words, use fewer words. The smaller a blogpost is, the lesser time it takes a reader to read it, less uninterested the reader will be.

Oh yeah, for cryin’ out loud! DONT USE WORDS THAT DO NOT ADD TO THE MEANING OF THE POST. It is annoying to see ridiculous ‘buzz words’ or jargon ladden blogposts. It makes it difficult to glean the meaning of the sentence. It probably works well with the paper you are sumbitting as a part of your project or assignment. That is beacuse the professor or teacher is paid to read what you write. It will NOT work with blogs. Very few people have the time to spend 30 minutes or more on a single post. Be mindful of that.

Please use active sentences to the extent possible. Here is an example of passive voice:

The legal process of filing charges against the plaintiff has been initiated.

The same sentence in active voice reads:

Lawyers have started fiing charges against the plaintiff.

It is always advisable to use active voice (notice the irony ;) ). Active voice sentences are more readable than passive voice.

Also choose active, precise verbs to invigorate your blogs posts. It will help you avoid passive voice and excessive use of ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’ etc. The list of active verbs are available here. Although it is targetted at scientific and technical writing, I think it applies for blogging as well.

To paraphrase, a good blog/blogpost

1. Makes a good impression when read
2. Has been written for a specific audience
3. Reads coherently from beginging to end
4. Provides information without jargon, or padding
5. Has simple sentence structure
6. Most of the sentences are in active voice
7. Can be understood by readers who were not a part of the inital readership