4 ms·
Dialogs are definitely an interesting form of writing, especially for technical writing. On the one hand, it's a deeply natural format with a long and complex h
by WorldMaker 2y ago
Dialogs are definitely an interesting form of writing, especially for technical writing. On the one hand, it's a deeply natural format with a long and complex history (the Socratic Method, especially, but certainly not alone). On the other hand, we've long disassociated it from "professional writing" which is to supposed to only have one proscribed argument and one direct viewpoint (likely, but not always, the author's).
Somewhere in the middle, is decades of the "…for Dummies" technical manual formula and its stock dialog characters and the love affair many had (or still have) with "The Poignant Guide to Ruby".
Dialogs can definitely be hard to read in the context of just reading a single blog post because you don't have a familiarity with that author's characters and most blog authors don't have a "shared universe" of characters. I wonder if there's an interesting world where for instance the Dummies characters were considered to be public domain at the right time or more blog writers felt confident with _why's unique voices to turn Poignant's characters into a modern "Punch & Judy" for technical writing. The Socratic Method worked because everyone had a shared intuition on the characters of the day (in part because many were famous Senators and/or Wrestlers): Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc. (Also, Plato was his wrestling name, these were absolutely characters.) Maybe if we want to use more Dialogs in blog posts easily we need better shared characters?