This post was written by Jennifer
Do you need to hit enter to be a good blogger?
This is sort of a blog chain of events. Last week I posted Do You Need A College Degree to Blog? Then Deb posted a reply of sorts; Do You Need to Be a Good Writer to be a Good Blogger?
I was thinking about Deb’s post, because the things that bug me about blogs, so much so that I quit reading, usually have less to do with the actual writing quality and more to with personal annoyances. If a post has some misspelled words, I can overlook it. Being a fan of weird random dashes, even when they’re not necessarily correct, I don’t mind oddball punctuation. If thoughts are sort of fuzzy, but the blogger still makes their point, or better yet makes me laugh, I’ll hang.
If a post has so many misspelled words that you can’t follow, or constant question marks where periods should be, yeah I likely won’t stick around, but I don’t see this too often.
What annoys me is when a blog is not user friendly due to lame little things. For instance, I HATE when people don’t hit enter. I expect spaces. Trying to make your readers blind, by making them scan walls of text for meaning is not cool, and I won’t do it.
I don’t like when people can’t be bothered with inserting links. It takes less than five seconds to insert a link. Stuff like http://www.lameblog.com looks so bad in a post. Why not just insert the link correctly. Non-inserted links don’t always drive me away, but they make me think twice about revisiting a blog.
Lastly, I hate all the darn acronyms in posts. I say this all the time, because frankly, I don’t even like them in emails. It looks lazy to me to use stuff like ROFLMAO, MTF, BF, and so on in a post when you could use words. Also, some of them make no sense (SOTMG or YBS for example). I don’t enjoy having to look up insane acronyms to see what you mean, and I won’t. I don’t mind acronym use in post comments. I think they’re ok if you’re talking about your mean MIL or an ASAP situation, but that’s about it.
These issues force me to leave a blog and never return. What about you? Is there something that bugs you more than lackluster writing skills?
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6 Responses to “Do you need to hit enter to be a good blogger?”
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I agree with you on the hitting enter. I just can’t handle reading long paragraphs without breaks. In fact, I feel like any web writing should have excessive breaks to create whitespace. It just makes it easier to read.
This goes for comments too. Some people’s responses go on forever with out a space and I can barely keep reading it. It is really hard on they eyes!
Unsolicited music!
Unless it’s a musician’s site, there’s no need to be blaring music at me. It either interrupts my silence or fights with my own music.
I leave instantly. I don’t even look for the “turn music off” button.
I can’t stand ROFLs and LOLs either - or anything that resembles a 14 year old text messaging. I like to think about what I’m reading but I don’t want to have to think to figure out what I’m reading, if that makes any sense.
And yes paragraphs are your friend. Use them. Embrace them. Love them.
“Unsolicited music!” - Sandy no joke; good one. There is nothing worse than going to any site and all of a sudden there’s super loud noise blaring at you. Oooo, I hate that. Plus I work while my son sleeps in the same room sometimes, and I’d be pretty mad if noise woke him.
Definitely unsolicited music. It’s why I stay away from MySpace too. What an assault on the senses!
Great points, Jen, and I agree. Except I would add “fuzzy thoughts,” bad grammar and lots of misspellings to my biggest blog turn-offs. (I haven’t ever noticed your random dashes, and if I did, they weren’t random enough to turn me off!)
Let me say, if the content is *really* exceptional, I’ll overlook grammatical gaffs and poor writing… but usually, the two go hand in hand. Bloggers who don’t care enough to improve their writing skills typically don’t provide content that you can’t find–better written–in a dozen other places on the Web.
Music and excessive sound, too, turns me off.