6 ms·

I give you feedback on your blog post draft but you don't send it to me (2021)

226 points by Tomte 2y ago

SPBS 2y ago
entertaining and very true. I will be sending this article to people next time I see them waffling on something.
AndyNemmity 2y ago
Fantastic advice, packaged in a fun and relatable way. Accurate.
Semaphor 2y ago
Funnily enough, the article had too many headings for me. I’m scared of Wall of Texts as much as the next netizen, but I need… text fences? Something a bit more than Heading-Paragraph repeated.
- benterix 2y ago
  I agree, but that's their way of breaking quite a long article into chunks that others would find digestible.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    It also helps that they include 8 pictures. They break things up, even if they are otherwise unnecessary.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    Their second heading is the same size as the first one, which made me think it's already the next blog post. IMHO, they're too big regardless. They're fine as a title but a (sub)heading doesn't need a 40px font.
- ximm 2y ago
  I noticed that I automatically switched to only reading headings when the sections were super short. I guess there is some kind of rule here: The more headings you use, the less people will read your paragraphs.
exikyut 2y ago
This reminds me uncannily of the anecdote from news media: 1. Say what you're about to say 2. Say it 3. Say what you just said I read it a while back so unfortunately I don't have a source.
- freetonik 2y ago
  I've heard this is a standard advice given to high school students in North America writing essays.
rozenmd 2y ago
Fundamentals I picked up from years of writing on the Internet: - Shorter sentences In general, you should aim to write sentences with 8-13 words each. - Shorter words You may think of this as "dumbing-down" your writing, but you don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of using. - One idea per sentence In other words, don't write non sequiturs. - One concept per paragraph
- easyThrowaway 2y ago
  Quoting Umberto Eco: "You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences."[1] [1]https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-...
- 0xEF 2y ago
  It is dumbing down. Let's not dance around that particular bush. Shorter sentences and words with fewer syllables is why mainstream media has a following. Simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses. So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a blog. It's terrible if you actually want to write.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    The point of a blog is, more often than not, to communicate something. It’s not a writing exercise. If writing using a simple style helps you communicate to more people more easily then that’s a win. Also, “simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses” is a terrible way to look at the current situation if you ask me.
    - 0xEF 2y ago
      I don't like it anymore than you do, Which is why my blog is a "writing exercise," as you put it. I believe people can be more engaged with their media, but it is admittedly easier to go for the slogan-style messaging nobody has to think too hard about. I dream of a world where everyone has valuable, well-considered input and I will continue to write as though I live in that world until we get there. Asking someone who wants to practice the art of writing to do otherwise is no different than asking a painter to just make stick figures.
marginalia_nu 2y ago
I'm very much a fan of the inverted pyramid structure[1], which is alluded to in the post but not quite spelled out. You want the point of the article as early as possible, in the title or the first paragraph, and then you elaborate on why. This filters out people who aren't going to be interested, and piques the interest of those who will. You can also just stop reading at any point and will have gotten the most out of it anyway. Most annoying format of writing I know is the article that strings you along some meandering 40k word essay and you can barely find out what it's about until two thirds the way down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
- layer8 2y ago
  One annoying feature of the inverted pyramid structure is that it often isn’t clear to the reader. The reader reads on and things keep getting rehashed in more and more (not necessarily interesting) detail, and to the reader it’s not clear that the article is effectively already done in its scope and no new point will be coming up (although they’re not even halfway through the article), until they give up because it just keeps endlessly meandering on.
  - Avalaxy 2y ago
    This is how I feel about a lot of books, such as The Lean Startup. Technically, there's a new topic with every chapter, but after the first 100 pages or so I feel like I get the gist, and I'm not really learning much new.
    - marginalia_nu 2y ago
      A lot of modern book publishing has turned into a bit of a bait and switch grift. You take 2 post-it notes worth of ideas and pad them out to 300 pages with tangentially related anecdotes, because on average people buy books online based on the title and the page count alone, and put them on a shelf for several years before they read them, meaning they can't return them by the time they find out.
amotinga 2y ago
I read the entire thing. that doesnt happen often.
jraph 2y ago
If you write a recipe, don't forget to start the post by a long story that recounts your whole life and your grand parents'. A recipe without this doesn't taste good, and everybody is interested in your story. A few pages of this annoys nobody I know.
- komadori 2y ago
  One time I was baking a cake from an online recipe, probably just after recipe sites discovered the importance of verbosity for SEO. I found myself struggling a bit because the recipe wasn't very clearly structured and was quite vague about several of the steps, but I managed to work something out and get it in the oven. It was only then that I discovered what I had been reading was an anecdote about one time the author had baked this cake, and the actual method was given below!
- CM30 2y ago
  Oh how badly SEO and copyright have screwed over online recipes... Sadly, the former have basically screwed over all kinds of online wrting, since everyone's trying to please Google rather than their readers.
SoftTalker 2y ago
Who, what, where, when, why? Organize with inverted pyramid (most important information at the top). Avoid jargon and fancy words. Use examples. This is all basic stuff you'd learn in a journalism class. Does anyone teach that anymore?
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  I bet they do, but the great thing with blogs is that you don't need to get a journalism degree first to publish one !
eigenblake 2y ago
What I don't see represented in this conversation is the idea that you can just write for personal satisfaction, or examine something you're personally interested in. Not everyone needs to have 10k+ monthly active readers. Not everything needs to be a rat race. Why don't we see blogging like exercise? Sure you'll have your body builders, but some people just go on walks, and no one is doing anything "wrong" they just have different goals.
- Yodel0914 2y ago
  Indeed. Not everything needs to be an optimization game. What also isn't discussed much that that readers have different tastes. Sometimes I enjoy a long, rambling narrative if I like the author's style (eg Sadly, Porn). Other times I wish they'd have just written a pamphlet with their 1 interesting idea (eg Die With Zero).
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Yeah, they could have put it differently in the > Of course, you can go off talking about something you find interesting, so long as you explain it in a way the audience can understand. You can use the Mario 0.5x A presses video as your guiding light, your North Star, if you will. ↩ bit. (After all, the Internet *excells* in allowing people with niche interests to find each other !) And focused more on how it's about not losing the readers that would actually find it interesting if it was presented just a little bit better.
kazinator 2y ago
> "It’s best practice to consider different perspectives. A review by an independent third party can lead to increased success." > What are you trying to tell me? It’s so vague it could mean anything. Who talks like that? Not who, what: AI.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Speaking of jargon, what does "on main" mean ? EDIT : This is the issue with «write like you talk / being too 'cute'» : with too much slang you're losing part of your target audience, especially as the blogpost gets older ! Other problematic examples in there that I got, but barely : «top text bottom text» (though thankfully solved by the author following their own advice about multimedia examples), and «galaxy brained». (Great advice otherwise.)
- kubanczyk 2y ago
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horny-on-main https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horny-on-main
bmacho 2y ago
This blog post started good~ish, but around 1/3 of it, I got bored, the style got repetitive, the style wasn't enough to keep me there, and the content was sparse, very sparse. An advice: dense content is cool. If it could fit on my screen, that would be the best. Put a ToC (where C should stand for the content) at the top of the blog post maybe. Or a cheat sheet poster pdf, or cuttable flashcards, with Amazon Affiliate links to new monitors. (Sorry, no original jokes today.)

226 points by Tomte 2y ago

SPBS 2y ago

entertaining and very true. I will be sending this article to people next time I see them waffling on something.

AndyNemmity 2y ago

Fantastic advice, packaged in a fun and relatable way. Accurate.

Semaphor 2y ago

Funnily enough, the article had too many headings for me. I’m scared of Wall of Texts as much as the next netizen, but I need… text fences? Something a bit more than Heading-Paragraph repeated.

benterix 2y ago
I agree, but that's their way of breaking quite a long article into chunks that others would find digestible.
- cubefox 2y ago
  It also helps that they include 8 pictures. They break things up, even if they are otherwise unnecessary.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  Their second heading is the same size as the first one, which made me think it's already the next blog post. IMHO, they're too big regardless. They're fine as a title but a (sub)heading doesn't need a 40px font.
ximm 2y ago
I noticed that I automatically switched to only reading headings when the sections were super short. I guess there is some kind of rule here: The more headings you use, the less people will read your paragraphs.

exikyut 2y ago

This reminds me uncannily of the anecdote from news media: 1. Say what you're about to say 2. Say it 3. Say what you just said I read it a while back so unfortunately I don't have a source.

freetonik 2y ago
I've heard this is a standard advice given to high school students in North America writing essays.

rozenmd 2y ago

Fundamentals I picked up from years of writing on the Internet: - Shorter sentences In general, you should aim to write sentences with 8-13 words each. - Shorter words You may think of this as "dumbing-down" your writing, but you don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of using. - One idea per sentence In other words, don't write non sequiturs. - One concept per paragraph

easyThrowaway 2y ago
Quoting Umberto Eco: "You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences."[1] [1]https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-...
0xEF 2y ago
It is dumbing down. Let's not dance around that particular bush. Shorter sentences and words with fewer syllables is why mainstream media has a following. Simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses. So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a blog. It's terrible if you actually want to write.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  The point of a blog is, more often than not, to communicate something. It’s not a writing exercise. If writing using a simple style helps you communicate to more people more easily then that’s a win. Also, “simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses” is a terrible way to look at the current situation if you ask me.
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    I don't like it anymore than you do, Which is why my blog is a "writing exercise," as you put it. I believe people can be more engaged with their media, but it is admittedly easier to go for the slogan-style messaging nobody has to think too hard about. I dream of a world where everyone has valuable, well-considered input and I will continue to write as though I live in that world until we get there. Asking someone who wants to practice the art of writing to do otherwise is no different than asking a painter to just make stick figures.

marginalia_nu 2y ago

I'm very much a fan of the inverted pyramid structure[1], which is alluded to in the post but not quite spelled out. You want the point of the article as early as possible, in the title or the first paragraph, and then you elaborate on why. This filters out people who aren't going to be interested, and piques the interest of those who will. You can also just stop reading at any point and will have gotten the most out of it anyway. Most annoying format of writing I know is the article that strings you along some meandering 40k word essay and you can barely find out what it's about until two thirds the way down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

layer8 2y ago
One annoying feature of the inverted pyramid structure is that it often isn’t clear to the reader. The reader reads on and things keep getting rehashed in more and more (not necessarily interesting) detail, and to the reader it’s not clear that the article is effectively already done in its scope and no new point will be coming up (although they’re not even halfway through the article), until they give up because it just keeps endlessly meandering on.
- Avalaxy 2y ago
  This is how I feel about a lot of books, such as The Lean Startup. Technically, there's a new topic with every chapter, but after the first 100 pages or so I feel like I get the gist, and I'm not really learning much new.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    A lot of modern book publishing has turned into a bit of a bait and switch grift. You take 2 post-it notes worth of ideas and pad them out to 300 pages with tangentially related anecdotes, because on average people buy books online based on the title and the page count alone, and put them on a shelf for several years before they read them, meaning they can't return them by the time they find out.

amotinga 2y ago

I read the entire thing. that doesnt happen often.

jraph 2y ago

If you write a recipe, don't forget to start the post by a long story that recounts your whole life and your grand parents'. A recipe without this doesn't taste good, and everybody is interested in your story. A few pages of this annoys nobody I know.

komadori 2y ago
One time I was baking a cake from an online recipe, probably just after recipe sites discovered the importance of verbosity for SEO. I found myself struggling a bit because the recipe wasn't very clearly structured and was quite vague about several of the steps, but I managed to work something out and get it in the oven. It was only then that I discovered what I had been reading was an anecdote about one time the author had baked this cake, and the actual method was given below!
CM30 2y ago
Oh how badly SEO and copyright have screwed over online recipes... Sadly, the former have basically screwed over all kinds of online wrting, since everyone's trying to please Google rather than their readers.

SoftTalker 2y ago

Who, what, where, when, why? Organize with inverted pyramid (most important information at the top). Avoid jargon and fancy words. Use examples. This is all basic stuff you'd learn in a journalism class. Does anyone teach that anymore?

BlueTemplar 2y ago
I bet they do, but the great thing with blogs is that you don't need to get a journalism degree first to publish one !

eigenblake 2y ago

What I don't see represented in this conversation is the idea that you can just write for personal satisfaction, or examine something you're personally interested in. Not everyone needs to have 10k+ monthly active readers. Not everything needs to be a rat race. Why don't we see blogging like exercise? Sure you'll have your body builders, but some people just go on walks, and no one is doing anything "wrong" they just have different goals.

Yodel0914 2y ago
Indeed. Not everything needs to be an optimization game. What also isn't discussed much that that readers have different tastes. Sometimes I enjoy a long, rambling narrative if I like the author's style (eg Sadly, Porn). Other times I wish they'd have just written a pamphlet with their 1 interesting idea (eg Die With Zero).
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Yeah, they could have put it differently in the > Of course, you can go off talking about something you find interesting, so long as you explain it in a way the audience can understand. You can use the Mario 0.5x A presses video as your guiding light, your North Star, if you will. ↩ bit. (After all, the Internet *excells* in allowing people with niche interests to find each other !) And focused more on how it's about not losing the readers that would actually find it interesting if it was presented just a little bit better.

kazinator 2y ago

> "It’s best practice to consider different perspectives. A review by an independent third party can lead to increased success." > What are you trying to tell me? It’s so vague it could mean anything. Who talks like that? Not who, what: AI.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

Speaking of jargon, what does "on main" mean ? EDIT : This is the issue with «write like you talk / being too 'cute'» : with too much slang you're losing part of your target audience, especially as the blogpost gets older ! Other problematic examples in there that I got, but barely : «top text bottom text» (though thankfully solved by the author following their own advice about multimedia examples), and «galaxy brained». (Great advice otherwise.)

kubanczyk 2y ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horny-on-main https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horny-on-main

bmacho 2y ago

This blog post started good~ish, but around 1/3 of it, I got bored, the style got repetitive, the style wasn't enough to keep me there, and the content was sparse, very sparse. An advice: dense content is cool. If it could fit on my screen, that would be the best. Put a ToC (where C should stand for the content) at the top of the blog post maybe. Or a cheat sheet poster pdf, or cuttable flashcards, with Amazon Affiliate links to new monitors. (Sorry, no original jokes today.)