| | What Holds My InterestA site I recently visited indicated that the author was looking for reasons to come back to other sites. I will ask the same question of that author. Why should I return again and again to your site?
I can be interested in many different things: everything from the weather to the condition of one's car; from a history of the Russian Revolution to the condition of the Great American Experiment; from the love life of a fruit fly to individual passions. But if you want me to read it, you must do me the courtesy of putting something together that doesn't take a lot of effort to read.
Now I'm not a great writer, but one of my passions is writing well enough to appear to have had a semi-decent education. By that I mean that I write complete sentences, I punctuate them properly, and I don't put together strings of sentences so long that it takes and hour to read a single paragraph. If a paragraph is more than 10 lines in length, it becomes like work to understand what the writer is trying to say.
I like proper spelling, too. If you want to use a contraction, that's fine. I use quite a few of them myself in informal writing such as this. But use them correctly. The word is "you're" when you mean "you are", "not "your" which by the way is a possessive spelling indicating ownership, as in "your blog", not a contraction. I'm also old fashioned enough to believe that the word is spelled "you" and not "u".
I'm not overly fond of a lot of wild colors on sites either. Please don't misunderstand me here. I can handle the use of color and pictures. The design of the devilishang3lic site is fine with me as an example. It is both creative and readable. I also like Pheebles site. It's clear and easy for me to take in. I'll be going back to both sites on a regular basis. What I really don't like is backgrounds that interfer with my reading, things like watermarks that scream at me, balloons the float before my eyes, and foreground texts that blend into the background color so well that they can barely be seen, let alone read.
My site happens to be black text on an off-white background, but that is only because I'm new here and haven't yet had time to experiment with other site designs yet. I'm sure it will change, but it won't be wild.
And another thing that will lose me fast is the seemingly endless need to be vulgar these days. Those who find it necessary to use foul language will undoubtedly say that they are exercising their freedom of speech and expressing their true feelings. But from where I sit, anyone who feels the need to use four letter words in their speech (or in the written word) is simply displaying a lack of skill with the English language and a measure of poor breeding.
If you are writing something, it can be presumed that you have something to say. If you have something to say, it must be presumed that you want someone to understand your thoughts on some matter. Tell me then, without resorting to profanity, how your use of foul language helps me to understand your thoughts! Tell me how using the "F" word or the "S" word does a better job of letting me know that you're upset than simply saying you're "upset" or "very upset" or "irritated" or any number of other words that convey the thought.
Profanity does not contribute anything useful to a conversation beyond having me ask myself if the one who wrote it was born in a barn. And if I'm that distracted by it, you have failed to convey your thought to me, and the whole point of your writing has been lost. You have wasted your time.
You want me to read your site? Be polite.
|
| | Posted 2/21/2006 9:16 AM - 3 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- give stars
- votes0
- email
 - sent0
|
