The Language of Blogs

I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually surfing one or two of the blog exchanges I belong.

I realized yesterday that I seldom read the whole entry unless it's very short. Many are quite uncomfortable to read, some downright excruciating, in terms of their grammatical skills, spelling, and style. Because it is such an immediate and off-the-cuff personal expression, do the standard language rules apply?

The conversational nature of a blog leads naturally to an informal, casual approach that can be refreshing and innovative, indirectly echoing some of the great writers of the past who used dialect and local expressions to vitalize their work.

It is unfortunate that so many who write don't understand basic language rules so cannot effectively break them. When it takes major time and effort to understand what on earth the writer is trying to say, rather than being able to appreciate the content and point of view being expressed, it becomes merely an exercise in frustration.

The beauty, and ultimate value of blogging, is that communication is direct, individual, and uncensored. No editor with an eye on public opinion or potential legal consequences is cutting out whole paragraphs in fear they will offend. There is no filter applied by conservative management or the need for committee consensus prior to publication.

However, those of us who publish our thoughts and opinions to the world do have one big responsibility: to our readers. We can, happily, say anything we want but need to clearly communicate our point of view.

Anything less demeans the value of this wonderful new medium and leads to millions of electronic pages that fail to unite us in community, as is our goal, but merely consumes virtual space like the incoherent ramblings of a lonely psychotic.

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://drvirginiabola.blogspot.com

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Blogging/RSS Information:

Related Articles

Small / Medium Business Blog Process Outsourcing as a Website Traffic Building Service
You are a small or a medium business owner. You have a well designed business website.
BlogoCentric Communication: The Next Great Event in Social Evolution
Here is a pretty cool lesson in the structure and travel of information in the Blogosphere (that's bloggers on the Internet talking to each other about each other). If you haven't read the book The Tipping Point yet, then you are really missing something because it sets the foundation for how future electronic communications are going to happen in the future.
RSS Works: Hard Metrics to Prove It
Marketers are constantly asking if RSS marketing works and if this can be proved.It's time to take a look at some real-life RSS metrics from real-life marketers.
RSS Feeds, What They Are and How to Use Them
What does RSS stand for?RSS "Really Simple Syndication" was created in the 1999 to allow information to be published and subscribed to. RSS basically takes bits of up-to-date information from websites and provides it in concise simple text based format.
How to Use a Blog to Dramatically Improve Your Web Business!
A blog is an online journal in which the author publishes his or her thoughts and opinions on a subject which interests them. A good blog will be updated frequently with new points of interest which the blogger (author) and readers can discuss.
Google Does RSS
Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace!It does use XML technology which allows for the crawling and updating of your site's web pages. You can even include your entire web site (all urls) with this indexing program.
Blogging Advice - Give Your Readers What They Want
Web gives a lot of exposure; weblog stabilizes the exposure with a profound purpose. The purpose of a Weblog is to complement e-newsletters, serving readers in a way that extends a blogger's expertise and leadership in the market.
#1 Mistake Most Blogs Do
As much as this might surprise most bloggers, the #1 mistake most blogs are doing is not publishing their content via e-mail, as a supplement to their RSS feeds.Just think about it: while RSS is growing strong, it still only penetrates about 5-6% of the American online population.
An Example of a Business Blog: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Blog
Think of a product or a service that your business provides to customers. This product may requires lots of instructions to assemble, tips to use efficiently, or simply requires lots of questions to be answered before it can be used.
The Language of Blogs
I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually surfing one or two of the blog exchanges I belong.I realized yesterday that I seldom read the whole entry unless it's very short.
7 Tips for Successful Blogging
So, you have a blog! Do you have traffic? Do you know how to build traffic to your weblog? There are seven proven methods for building readership of your blog. They start with defining the purpose, or life, of your blog.
Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business
As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you can use and should be taking advantage of.
Why Every Site Needs RSS
RSS or 'Really Simple Syndication' is not just for Blogs and News sites. Every website can benefit from this newly popular technology.
If an RSS feed is the Yahoo Backdoor, is a Blog Googles?
Though the answer is in a book I wrote this July, the question is still asked of me repeatedly. Why does it work for some sites and not others? And how come some blogs get indexed in a day and then are dropped, and others stay in Google indefinitely?Well, let's take one question at a time.
The Viability of Blogging to a Niche Market
Niche marketing is an old and very successful marketing strategy whereby a company focuses on marketing and selling to a clearly defined segment of potential consumers. The company earns by supplying a unique product or service to this narrowly defined market which other companies have not met or provided.
10 Benefits of Being a Blogger
I have been a blogger since September 2004 but only began to take it seriously this year. My blogging journey began when I stumbled upon a company owned by Google named Blogger.
RSS - The Making of a Feed
Everyday more and more websites, news services and blogs are adding RSS content. RSS is a method of syndicating content.
7 Tips for Choosing the Right Blog Software for Your New Blog
Choosing the right blog software for your new blog requires that you ask yourself some questions and make a list of all of the features and tools you need as well as your budget. Once you have this information written down you will be prepared to start shopping for blog software.
What Are RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds.RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content.
Should Affiliates Really Use Blogging and Pinging To Get Indexed?
There seems to be a huge craze lately with everyone trying to blog and ping to get their websites indexed into the search engines. Although this can be a great tool, all marketers should first understand exactly what they're getting themselves into before starting.