Weekend Wordery: “Blog Canonical Form”
Blog posts come in certain paradigmatic forms. One can imagine breaking these down into a rough taxonomy: the long expository, the paraphrastic brief, the chart-delivery mechanism, etc. The most common of these, at least within the Order Wonkospheria, must be what Austin Frakt has dubbed “blog canonical form”:
Blog Canonical Form
(A) So-and-so has written something about thus-and-such.
(B) A substantial quote from so-and-so’s post about thus-and-such.
(C) But I think so-and-so has got it wrong or right. Here’s why.
(D) Finally, my own thoughts on thus-and-such include these nuances. Blah, blah, blah.
End.
Here are four posts in blog canonical form. Look for it. You’ll see it every day on many blogs.
See what’s happening here? The real content is at the end of part (D), the “blah, blah, blah” with which the writer explains some important and different ways to think about thus-and-such. Parts (A), (B), and (C) are all set-up. One need not read them, especially if one has already read so-and-so’s post to which the writer refers and quotes. If one hasn’t read so-and-so’s post then reading part (D) and part (B) is sufficient and often no less informative than reading the whole thing.The nice thing is that parts (D) and (B) are easy to find. The former is at the end, the latter is indented.
If you also find it efficient to read blog posts backwards and you’re doing so with this post you can stop reading now. You’ve already got my point.
There are of course variants. And I’ve often found that…blah blah… you’re not really reading this part anyway…blah blah….
But let’s get down to what this post is really about: me! If you hovered your mouse over the links in the block quote above, you would have noticed that a post of mine was included as one of the exemplars of blog canonical form. Me, an exemplar of blog canonical form—now that’s something to make Mother proud!1
- Although, if you think about it, the point of Austin’s post was to formulate a strategy for skipping, rather than reading, most of a post in blog canonical form. But I don’t think my mom needs to know that part. [↩]
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