Whatever happened to brevity in posting?
Diego Doval writes about a tool’s influence on the writing process:
I keep seeing flashes of text, sentence-bursts that I have the impulse to blog and then, inevitably, evaporate in a “nah, too short.”
Looking at widely used weblog software (wordpress, movable type) one has to acknowledge that their design and interfaces don’t encourage shorter posts.
Don’t underestimate the influence of your writing tools: since switching to marsedit as my weblog editor i find myself far more willing to post early, post often – which is a good thing in my book. It’s email-like interface has something refreshingly non-threatening to it.
I guess the rise of “one page per permalink” layouts (as opposed to “many posts per page, one anchor per post” layouts) pretty much killed the quick blogpost. Add in overwhelming sidebars and tons of distracting little widgets, and a brief sentence or two of commentary become terribly overwhelmed by the weight of the page they’re placed on. I always thought of this form of quick links as the origin and essence of weblogging and seeing it vanish is sad. As Phil Ringnalda points out, saying just enough is sometimes enough and should be encouraged by weblog software.
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