Today, my friend The Lord Jesus Christ Paul trundled into the Great Big Room Full of Many People Working, perched on my precarious desk, and asked if we’d seen the NYT article about First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who wrote a 200+ page journal to his 9-month old son before dying in Iraq.
Paul then wondered aloud whether all these pixels are somehow less valuable than an honest-to-goodness, old-school journal. Because what’s more meaningful: A soldier’s painstakingly handwritten tribute to his son or a soldier’s not-as-painstakingly blogged tribute to his son? What happens when that electromagnetic pulse obliterates all our blogular musings? And, in an ironic twist, does that make electronic writing somehow even more delicate and fleeting than paper? Am I drawing with chalk?
I’m not sure it matters. Powerful, honest writing moves you despite the medium. Jordan King was given something precious. But I don’t know that it would be any less touching to read Sgt. King’s words in his own hand.
Neither am I sure that it doesn’t matter. Which is why I’m going to dust off the journal I kept since I was 15 but lazily abandoned about three years ago. You can’t blog everything. And you shouldn’t want to.
I hereby plead guilty to Yelp abuse. I heed many a Yelp, but I do not Yelp back, and that makes me a very, very bad person. I have recently taken steps to correct this, and I shall soon begin Yelping all the places I have been to and enjoyed in the greater San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. But until then, I'm brushing up on my review skills.
The more observant among you may have noticed that I have a section on this site dedicated to books I am reading, but that this section does not actually contain book reviews. This is because I believe that no one gives a crap what I have to say about books. If I were a world-renowned personality with whom you could identify because of my wildly disheveled hair, my penchant for wearing bolo ties and unflattering eyewear, and my widely publicized opinions concerning arts and letters, then sure, I’d throw in a book review or two. Since I am not such a personality (bolo ties make my neck look fat), I am satisfied to risk copyright infringement by posting book excerpts.1
Also, I’m lazy and don’t want to add book reviews to my list of things I’m not going to do anytime soon.
This decision, though infinitely wise, has caused my review skills to atrophy somewhat. I am therefore developing a series of formulas to help me. Feel free to use them where applicable.
Restaurant Review
The n was x but lacked y.
Where n = a menu item, x = a non-committal yet positive adjective, and y = a hyperbolic adjective not generally used to describe food.
i.e., “The pork loin was flavorful but lacked gravitas”
or, for the more advanced reviewer:
What the a lacked in x, the b made up for in y.
Where a = a menu item, x = a characteristic often used in conjunction with fast cars, b = a menu item, and y = an adjective generally used by Victorian novelists to describe a young woman.
i.e., “What the the vichyssoise lacked in punch, the crème brûlée made up for in delicacy.”
Music Review
n. That’s what the new x album calls to mind.
Where n = evocative nonsense and x = a band name.
i.e., “Tipping cows in the rain. That’s what the new Limozeen album calls to mind.”
Boutique Clothing Store Review
The selection was x! But y, those sales clerks were z.
Where x = an overly enthusiastic positive adjective, y = an overused slang expression, and z = an insult ranging from the somewhat rude to the extremely vulgar.
i.e., “The selection was fabulous! But OMG, those sales clerks were j***-g***ling c***faces.”2
1This presents me with an opportunity to plead with any authors whose work I may have excerpted on this website. Kindly do not sue me. I’m only trying to introduce your fine works to my tiny readership. That and collect enough Amazon gift certificate money to buy a new TV.
2While I had intended a specific set of letters to be substituted for these asterisks, it has been brought to my attention that there are a few possible interpretations, all equally offensive.
T’other day at work, I was asked to make a correction that was grammatically sound but that sounded really bad. So I ignored it. I try to err on the side of conversational English, not because I’m lazy (though I certainly am), but because I realize that writing for the Interwebs means having a conversation with all y’all. Moreso than if I were writing a novel or an essay or a poem (uh, as IF). Because of all the things — links, tags, comments, notes — that make the Internet one big conversation.
That’s also why I don’t hold with Washington Post copy chief and author Bill Walsh’s assertion that he’s “not a big fan of the idea of books and classes about ‘writing for the Web’ and similar nonsense. Writing is writing, on a Gateway or with a glitter pen.” Doesn’t good writing take the audience into account? In the case of the Web, that’s an audience who finds your words by linking from who-knows-where, an audience who can comment on whatever you say — either directly or via message boards or blogs — instantly and publicly, an audience who is only ever one click away from leaving your finely crafted prose. They’re talking to you, if only through their clicktastic behavior. Why not talk to them, in a language they understand?
Jane Espenson, Buffy/Battlestar/Gilmore Girls television writer extraordinaire says something similar about writing good dialogue — that conversational, non-grammatically-hamstrung writing is not only easier on the ears, it’s also more natural and engaging:
Writing dialogue should feel a bit like taking dictation from the same part of your brain that comes up with what you actually say all day long. If it gets tangled up, let it. If it hesitates, put in an “um”. If it stumbles to a halt and trails off, well that’s what ....s are for. You can massage it all later, take out all the stuff that makes normal speech so totally unlistenable... to. But the work of making dialogue sound natural gets easier if you let it come out of your brain that way.
Feel free to argue (see “conversation” above...), but I think the same goes for web writing. You’re talking to someone, even when you’re typing.
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.