Sunday, February 12, 2012

Jewish Laura talks about blawgs

There's no reason to write a blog unless you think people actually want to read your informal musings/rants. Then you are full of yourself and/or pretentious. But then again, I'm a wonderful person and I used to write a blog. So there's an exception to every rule.
There are a few key elements which make blogs good: relevance, humor, and insight. Is the writer telling me something new that I want to hear in a way that I want to hear it?
I would say the Parkinson's piece has all 3 elements. I'm not terribly interested in Parkinson's, but I am interested in diseases and disabilities, and I'm also scared that the topic will one day be more relevant to me. Since the tone is informal, it sort of takes the edge off the depressing subject. I would guess that most of us wouldn't want to read a technical/medical account of Parkinson's disease, nor would we enjoy reading one that was written in a tragic tone.
Amy Tan's piece also embodies all 3 elements of a good blog. I'm sure all of us can relate to the challenges of signing an email. Letter-writing we learned in 5th grade; email we're still working on. (Even though I write dozens of emails a day and hardly one letter a month.) Her tone was also informal, though in this case I would have just as much enjoyed it being written from a formal linguistic perspective.
The typeface blog was rather dry. I know as much about Parkinson's as I do about typefaces, but I found that I just could not get into an interview with a typeface-r. (That's what I'm calling those toss-pots.) There was no point-of entry in this blog. I did not laugh, I was not drawn to new information, and I did not connect it to my own life. Perhaps you could call this one a BlogFail.

2 comments:

  1. Laura,
    You've started something like an examination of the work, but didn't quite get it all the way developed. Go back to the samples, she suggests. Read the sheets of elements, so you can go deeper beyond opinion.
    e

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  2. I agree that humor is an important element in a good blog. Well, maybe you don't NEED humor, but I personally am drawn to a blog that I can relate to. I think everyone found the typography blog a little bit dry. Hopefully that was the point...

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