Hook the Eye and Ear: Writing Blog Style

by Steve Klein, Communication

Blogs have taken publishing full circle. Ben Franklin, after all, was an 18th century journalist and publisher because he, too, owned the means of production of his time, the printing press. In addition to the writer owning the means of production, blogs also have returned to earlier writing styles and conventions: conversational, personal and fluid, based on the blogger’s audience and purpose(s). For college bloggers, that means that those old rules still apply.

Blogs communicate best when they reflect the writer’s voice. But writers also need to hook a reader’s eye—to think presentation as well as content. Because reading comprehension online is only about 25 percent of the printed page, simple devices such as boldfacing names, bullet-pointing a list, or breaking up blocks of type with subheads allow a reader to focus while scanning the content.

Blogs also tend to read best when they’re written in a journalistic style. While journalists base their writing on “The Associated Press Stylebook,” bloggers can also utilize a style closer to Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.” Turabian and the academic MLA/APA voice just don’t work for the cross-platform, online world of blogs.

That said, the rules for good writing still apply: Be clear; be aware of your audience; use proper punctuation, good word choice and sentence structure; and keep the language simple enough to be read in sound bites—longer than tweets but shorter than the style of traditional academic papers.