I’ve seen a couple posts floating around the internet lately discussing whether the ability to write well is necessary, or even desirable, for someone who wants to write a blog.

It should be obvious that I’m going to come down on the “Yes, it’s necessary” side of the fence. After all, my entire blog started with the intent of encouraging correct writing behavior.

That said, however, I completely understand that there are plenty of people who don’t have a complete grasp of grammar who can still write entertainingly and informatively. There are plenty of blog-writers who play fast and loose with the rules of grammar that they know, just because they don’t feel it’s necessary. (God knows there are grammatical rules that I choose to ignore from time to time.)

There’s a difference between Technically Correct writing and Good writing.

You can program a decent computer to construct correct sentences. You can also program a computer to double-check your own spelling and grammar, but we all know how that goes. You turn on your Grammar Check and you start getting all sorts of complaints about perfectly valid usage, either because you’re writing by more casual rules, or because the computer has forgotten that starting a sentence with “and” is no longer forbidden (if it ever truly was).

Lots of good writers ignore the grammatical rules that irk them. It’s part of the fun. It’s a huge part of the creativity. If you constantly adhere to all the old-fogey kinds of rules, your writing is going to read like a boring text book, and who wants that?

So, in that regard, I’m fine reading blogs by people who end sentences with prepositions, use em-dashes too often, and occasionally mix up the proper usage of who and whom.

But. They have to make it worth my while.

If you can write an entertaining, funny, informative, enjoyable, worth-my-visit blog, I’m not going to quibble over your grammar. I’m not going to be a stick-in-the-mud over occasional typos. I won’t leave snide comments pointing out that you said “between you and I” when it should have been “between you and me.” I’ll accept those as minor, personal quirks, as if you were a friend whose shoelaces are constantly untied, or whose hair is always a mess. I’m not about to toss out a perfectly good friend because their attire isn’t perfect, or their house is a mess.

You can’t be too superficial–especially if it means tossing away something that’s solid gold.

Here’s the other secret, though.

I still want you to TRY.

Quibbling over minor errata is fruitless, especially if it can risk an otherwise fun and rewarding relationship (even a cyber one). But if your writing is so bad that you come across as if you don’t care? Like you ignore the rules because they’re beneath you, beyond you, above you, or just plain unimportant to you … I’m not interested. That’s the kind of friend who is so self-involved that I’m supposed to be honored that they’re talking to me at all. The kind who wears either outrageous, clashing clothing to draw attention or who hasn’t bothered to bathe in days. You know, because it’s all about them.

These are not the kind of people with whom I care to spend my time.

Ultimately, of the several hundred blogs that I read, the vast majority of them are written by literate people who can construct full sentences, usually avoid profanity, and generally type without resorting to constant emoticons and cutesy abbreviations. They are intelligent people who are funny, interesting, and wise, and are just the kind that I’d choose to spend my time with if, you know, they lived anywhere near me (grin).

My main criteria as to whether somebody needs to write “well” in order for me to read their blog?

I’m not worried about the building blocks. I’m more interested in what you’ve made with them.

If your writing is technically shaky but still entertaining–we’re good to go. I can’t say fairer than that, right?

(Yes, mixed metaphors galore, but hey. I never said I was perfect, either.)

What do you think about this? Is good writing necessary to your blog-reading experience?

This isn’t meant to be a formal discussion on the differences between these two forms of annotation, but just a topic something I’ve been thinking about.

I just finished reading a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was a good, interesting book about a complex man, but I had one complaint. Out of 800+ physical pages, only about 630 of them were the actual biography. That is, there were about 220 pages of bibliography, endnotes, index, and all that other “back matter.”

Mind you, this is perfectly reasonable for a well-researched biography. In fact, I find it encouraging in any book that leans even remotely into history or academia–it’s good to know the author wasn’t making the entire story up.

That’s not my complaint.

What irritated me was the proliferation of footnotes. You know, the ones that announced with an asterisk (*) and appear at the bottom of the page as an aside of some kind. It might be a short anecdote to illustrate a point, or a side note about how a specific person was so inspired they went on to become king of the world at a later date. They denote secondary information, ephemeral, not specifically germane to the discussion at hand, but tie in somehow, so that the author thought you should know. But–with over 200 pages of endnotes, why did the author need so many footnotes?

According to Wikipedia,

“A footnote is a note of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document. The note comments on and/or may cite a reference for part of the main body of text.” Endnotes, on the other hand, “are similar to footnotes, but instead of appearing at the foot of the page they are collected together at the end of the chapter or at the end of the work. They do not affect the image of the page, but may cause inconvenience for the reader who has to move back and forth between the main text and the endnotes.”

It should be obvious, if you’ve been reading for a while, that I love side-comments. I use parentheses and dashes more often in my casual writing than is strictly correct, since I was taught that it’s a sign of sloppy, badly organized thinking. Footnotes and endnotes, however, are more structured, more formal, and therefore more permissible than a casual aside. Wikipedia says that authors may use footnotes as signposts directing a reader to further information, as a means to attribute a quote or viewpoint, as an alternative to parenthetical comments, or as a way to avoid word count limitations on academic or legal text, since footnotes don’t contribute to word-count. (No, I didn’t know that, either.)

I’ll confess that there are times I enjoy reading footnotes. I like the feeling of getting extra, inside information, like the author is whispering a secret. (“You know, George Washington’s famous wooden teeth weren’t actually wood at all.”) It’s also true that I rarely ever flip to the back of a book to read the endnotes. It seems like all too often the note is only just a reference to some other book or letter in some library far away, and that just discourages me. (I’m not going to hop in my car and drive to Hyde Park to read FDR’s diaries, why can’t you just tell me what I need to know?) Since a footnote is on the same page, though, well, it’s just a matter of redirecting my eyes, not that hard.

But then, there are the negatives to footnotes and endnotes. The more symbols I see scattered across the page, like random cartoon swearing, the more distracted I get. Ooh! There’s an asterisk, let’s glance to the bottom … and, okay, interesting … back to the text. Reading, reading … Ooh! A superscript 1, glance to the bottom … no, darn … that’s for an endnote. That’s too much work, so back to … where was I again? Okay, that’s my spot … Reading, reading … I get to the bottom of the page and see that there’s a footnote denoted by a cross, but where was that in the text? I must have missed it. What paragraph was it in? What were they talking about? I’m re-skimming the page I just read but don’t see it…

Before too long, I’m doing my own version of cartoon swearing, and wondering why it’s taken me three hours to get through two little paragraphs. (Well, okay, I’m exaggerating for effect, but you get the idea.) And then we wonder why people have the collective attention span of a hummingbird these days!

Then there’s Footnote Fatigue. If I come across one or two footnotes per chapter, well, that’s fine. But one or two every few pages? Not to mention some that are so long they sprawl across three pages, so that I have to turn the page to finish reading the footnote and then go back to find my original place in the text? That’s simply no longer a “reasonable” use of footnotes. Between the plethora of footnotes and the 220 pages of back matter, the FDR biography I just finished had almost more “extras” than it did the main text. It was like watching an hour-and-a-half movie with the director’s commentary–only, instead of the director talking over the movie, he actually pauses it so he can ramble on about how rainy it was that day when they were filming, so by the time you’re done, you’ve spent four hours in front of the television and have no idea what the actual movie was about.

Is it just me, or should there be some rule as to how many footnotes a book can have?

I don’t want you to think that I don’t appreciate the irony.

I’ve talked often about the importance of proof-reading. I stand by it, too. Sure, everybody makes mistakes. Some are more obvious than others, some stem from poor typing, or from rushing and being careless. Some come from ignorance or a lack of concern for basic grammar and spelling. Ultimately, though, the only real defense against stupid, careless errors is eagle-eyed proof-reading.

So, don’t think I didn’t appreciate the irony when a reader caught a typo on my Services page. She discreetly sent me an email (thank you) to tell me to look for it, and even knowing there was a mistake, it took me longer than I care to admit to spot it. Even more ironically, it was a typo that would have easily been caught by a quick spell-check. (I’ve posted about those, too, and how you can’t trust them, but that sometimes (cough) they’re useful.)

But wait, there’s more! Not only that, she looked at the writing samples on my page and spotted another one in one of my sample articles. (Oh, the shame!) My only excuse is that I was in such a hurry to get my Services page up and running that I didn’t take the time to make sure my samples were of sufficiently high-quality. I was more concerned with getting people here to look at my Services page at all. Yes, yes, mea culpa.

Still … this is perfect object lesson. Never forget that proof-reading is important!

But, I figured, this gave me the perfect excuse to go even one better. I took that mediocre writing sample and improved it.

Here is a link to the original. It’s an article on asthma and while not dreadful, it reads rather like a cobbled-together collection of bits of data gathered from many different places. Which, really, it was. It’s not the worst article in the world, but it’s wordy, and reads like a technical article–something that requires concentration, not easy to skim. Worse, it’s not up to par visually, either, since the formatting is inconsistent. Let’s just say that it’s not as professional as a professional sample should be.

Here is the improved version. I tightened the text from three pages down to two. I added a little more, shall we say, personality, but still kept the important details. It still may not be perfect, but it should no longer be embarrassing. (Or so I hope.)

Yep, I’m telling you. You’ve got to practice what you preach. We are all human, and we all make mistakes, but seriously–talk about a stupid mistake. Do I at least get credit for turning mine into an object lesson for the rest of you?

It’s a favorite theme, stressing the importance of proof-reading, and here’s another example:

See this paper towel? All covered with kitchen-related words, all connected to cooking?

Do you see something wrong?

Look closer.

Granted, the word “beet” describes a root vegetable that is often found in kitchens, but when it’s surrounded by words like season, roast, cut, and mash–with nary another food mentioned–you can be pretty sure that the paper towel company meant to say “beAt,” huh?

Here’s an interesting juxtapostion.

Yesterday was a big deal in math circles, being called “Square Root Day” because it was March 3rd, 2009. (03×03=09)

Today is not only National Grammar Day, but it’s the only day that qualifies as a full, declarative sentence: March Forth! (fourth)

Right there, in a nutshell, you’ve got the crux of communication as we know it.

Numbers and Words. Conveniently paired on Calendars everywhere. (Well, okay, assuming that they are Gregorian calendars, and it helps if you’re an English speaker, but you know what I mean.)