The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Earlier posts in this series appear below.
Question #5: Are your writers and editors familiar with in-house stylebooks for published—posted or printed—texts?
Even junior editors are familiar with stylebooks, those guides to grammar, spelling, punctuation, voice, footnotes, numeration, treatment of proper names, and hundreds of other aspects of written communication. The best known and most widely used general stylebooks are The Chicago Manual of Style and The AP Stylebook (AP = Associated Press). But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stylebooks available, many addressing special interests like articles for scientific journals or appropriate terms related to specific ethnic identities.
In addition, it's very common for professional publications and websites to create in-house stylebooks that codify unique usage choices and patterns.
Stylebooks contribute to consistency, one requirement of clarity in written communication. They also help writers and editors employ norms of language and presentation, thereby minimizing the "huh?" factor so deadly to readers and users.
Stylebooks are not meant to enforce either rigid formality or dull conformity in text; on the contrary, by liberating the written word from confounding errors and muddled inconsistency, they enhance creativity and reader comprehension.
The evidence from official site text on Blogger.com suggests that there's no physical stylebook or subscription to an online style resource in that wing of the Googleplex. (Google bought Blogger.com in 2003.) The fact is—and it's a sad fact for Blogger users like me eager to learn more, but not immersed in tech culture—Blogger doesn't appear to be aware of its own deficiency. I'm guessing that this is because management there emphasizes functional development to the exclusion of clear and useful communications to users about how to exploit the site's functionality. Or maybe, as I've heard from insiders, Blogger is a relatively low priority at Google. In this environment, perhaps, effective communication at Blogger has gone the way of arts in the schools.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Six Questions for Blogger, cont.
The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Earlier posts in this series appear below.
Question #4: Is consistency of style in written text—generally considered helpful, even essential, to effective communication—valued at Blogger?
The house text on Blogger.com is skimpy and inadequate for average users like me who want to do more than simply start a new blog. As thin as it is, though, the text has a number of errors. These strongly suggest that Blogger's management is either unaware of or places little value on norms and standards related to effective written communication.
One example, a minor one, but indicative of sloppy writing and editing. In the Settings menu, you'll find this sentence:
If you select "No" your blog will not appear in these places, but it will still be available on the Internet.
Just below this, you'll come across a similar sentence:
If you select "No", everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
Clearly, no competent editor is looking at this text. How else to explain the inconsistency in the use of a comma at the end of the dependent clause that begins this sentence? (Never mind that in the second example, the comma is incorrectly placed outside the end quotation mark, about which, see yesterday's blog below.)
My point isn't really about this particular example. Even the best edited posts and publications include errors. My point is that by ignoring professional standards, Blogger.com is dissing its users and probably compromising its own prospects. Which is a shame, of course, since this site is a great resource with great potential.
Question #4: Is consistency of style in written text—generally considered helpful, even essential, to effective communication—valued at Blogger?
The house text on Blogger.com is skimpy and inadequate for average users like me who want to do more than simply start a new blog. As thin as it is, though, the text has a number of errors. These strongly suggest that Blogger's management is either unaware of or places little value on norms and standards related to effective written communication.
One example, a minor one, but indicative of sloppy writing and editing. In the Settings menu, you'll find this sentence:
If you select "No" your blog will not appear in these places, but it will still be available on the Internet.
Just below this, you'll come across a similar sentence:
If you select "No", everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
Clearly, no competent editor is looking at this text. How else to explain the inconsistency in the use of a comma at the end of the dependent clause that begins this sentence? (Never mind that in the second example, the comma is incorrectly placed outside the end quotation mark, about which, see yesterday's blog below.)
My point isn't really about this particular example. Even the best edited posts and publications include errors. My point is that by ignoring professional standards, Blogger.com is dissing its users and probably compromising its own prospects. Which is a shame, of course, since this site is a great resource with great potential.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Six Questions for Blogger, cont.
The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Earlier posts in this series appear below.
Question #3: Are you aware that there’s a difference between American and British punctuation? If so, why do you use British punctuation, which, incidentally, is not the norm on other Google sites?
Any half-competent beginning editor can cite a dozen differences, among many more, between American and British written and spoken English related to spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, and usage. Oddly, Blogger seems unaware of one of the most basic and best known differences: In America, periods and commas are almost always—exceptions are very rare—placed inside terminal quotation marks, "like this." In the UK, the opposite is true: periods and commas go outside terminal quotation marks, "like this".
Official text in Blogger uses the British system. Here's one example (in red), copied from the Settings menu for the option, "Add your blog to our listings?"
If you select "Yes" we will include your blog in Google Blog Search and ping Weblogs.com. If you select "No", everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
Now, listen; I live in the real world and know that this is a minor infraction. Most Blogger users will not notice and fewer will object. But errors like this accumulate, and though their effects cannot be measured like hits to a web ad, there's no question they affect the user experience, and ultimately, influence loyalty.
The people behind the curtain at Blogger either don't care about text quality and effective written communication or don't know how to achieve it. It's also possible, of course, that Blogger editors, if there are any, have consciously adopted the British system. But I doubt it. This and other evidence at Blogger.com suggests that nobody at Blogger pays much attention to effective written communication.
There's a second tell-tale error in the sentence quoted above, which leads to the next question in this series. Stay tuned....
Question #3: Are you aware that there’s a difference between American and British punctuation? If so, why do you use British punctuation, which, incidentally, is not the norm on other Google sites?
Any half-competent beginning editor can cite a dozen differences, among many more, between American and British written and spoken English related to spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, and usage. Oddly, Blogger seems unaware of one of the most basic and best known differences: In America, periods and commas are almost always—exceptions are very rare—placed inside terminal quotation marks, "like this." In the UK, the opposite is true: periods and commas go outside terminal quotation marks, "like this".
Official text in Blogger uses the British system. Here's one example (in red), copied from the Settings menu for the option, "Add your blog to our listings?"
If you select "Yes" we will include your blog in Google Blog Search and ping Weblogs.com. If you select "No", everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
Now, listen; I live in the real world and know that this is a minor infraction. Most Blogger users will not notice and fewer will object. But errors like this accumulate, and though their effects cannot be measured like hits to a web ad, there's no question they affect the user experience, and ultimately, influence loyalty.
The people behind the curtain at Blogger either don't care about text quality and effective written communication or don't know how to achieve it. It's also possible, of course, that Blogger editors, if there are any, have consciously adopted the British system. But I doubt it. This and other evidence at Blogger.com suggests that nobody at Blogger pays much attention to effective written communication.
There's a second tell-tale error in the sentence quoted above, which leads to the next question in this series. Stay tuned....
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Six Questions for Blogger, cont.
The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Earlier posts in this series appear below.
Question #2 : Are you familiar with the editorial verity, "Writers and editors know more than readers"? Are you familiar with any editorial verities?
A professional verity is a truth informed by long experience in varying conditions.
Verities are guides, not commandments. Like The Constitution of the United States, they lend themselves to many interpretations.
There are at least a dozen editorial verities: "People like to see and read about people," for example, and "display type is as or more important than body copy," to name two. Knowing the verities is not enough to produce effective written communications. Smart judgments informed by meaningful experience are also required.
The "house" text on Blogger suggests either that there are no editors on staff or that Blogger editors have no authority. There's a third possibility: Blogger editors don't know what they're doing; they don't know the verities—among other things.
I don't know what the problem is. All I can tell you, as a new Blogger user, is that there is a problem. Blogger's house text is not very helpful.
I gave a talk at the Stanford Publishing Course about the Editorial Verities. This is what I said, slightly modified to apply to website editors, about Editors knowing more than readers:
As editors, we live, talk, dream, and breathe our subjects hour after hour, day after day. We talk shop with colleagues. We read what others are saying about our sites. We attend conferences. Through immersion, we become experts on our subject, slinging around acronyms and relevant themes with impressive and genuine familiarity.
It's easy to forget that our job as editors at complex, dynamic websites is to inhabit our users' perspective and to address that perspective—organizing, elucidating, and interpreting, rather than simply porting everything we know over to the page.
We must ask ourselves consciously and constantly, "Will this make sense to a user, one who likely cannot draw upon all the rich associations I can?" Asking this question requires stepping out of ourselves, our experience, our specialty, our concentration. It also requires specialized understanding of written language and how to make it effective. There's no other way.
Question #2 : Are you familiar with the editorial verity, "Writers and editors know more than readers"? Are you familiar with any editorial verities?
A professional verity is a truth informed by long experience in varying conditions.
Verities are guides, not commandments. Like The Constitution of the United States, they lend themselves to many interpretations.
There are at least a dozen editorial verities: "People like to see and read about people," for example, and "display type is as or more important than body copy," to name two. Knowing the verities is not enough to produce effective written communications. Smart judgments informed by meaningful experience are also required.
The "house" text on Blogger suggests either that there are no editors on staff or that Blogger editors have no authority. There's a third possibility: Blogger editors don't know what they're doing; they don't know the verities—among other things.
I don't know what the problem is. All I can tell you, as a new Blogger user, is that there is a problem. Blogger's house text is not very helpful.
I gave a talk at the Stanford Publishing Course about the Editorial Verities. This is what I said, slightly modified to apply to website editors, about Editors knowing more than readers:
As editors, we live, talk, dream, and breathe our subjects hour after hour, day after day. We talk shop with colleagues. We read what others are saying about our sites. We attend conferences. Through immersion, we become experts on our subject, slinging around acronyms and relevant themes with impressive and genuine familiarity.
It's easy to forget that our job as editors at complex, dynamic websites is to inhabit our users' perspective and to address that perspective—organizing, elucidating, and interpreting, rather than simply porting everything we know over to the page.
We must ask ourselves consciously and constantly, "Will this make sense to a user, one who likely cannot draw upon all the rich associations I can?" Asking this question requires stepping out of ourselves, our experience, our specialty, our concentration. It also requires specialized understanding of written language and how to make it effective. There's no other way.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Six Questions for Blogger, cont.
The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. The series began with an introduction on May 16, 2008.
Question #1: Who is the target audience for your house-written text?
Target audience. That's the first thing editors want to know—need to know—about a publication or website if the goal is effective communication.
It's the same for marketers, advertisers, and product managers, only their word for audience is customer or client.
Of course, you can't always know everything you want to know about the audience. And even if you could, knowing everything does not guarantee effective communication. But it's the starting place. It provides direction that shapes every decision about organization, vocabulary, voice, length, display type, and other qualities of the written word.
The house text on Blogger reads as if it's written for people who don't need it; that is, for users who are already Blogger veterans. This suggests that the writers are more-or-less writing for themselves and that there's no experienced editor involved to ask the right questions, seek answers, and measure results.
Consciously or not, young and growing businesses often neglect the expense or bother of fundamentals like good written communication. This may be understandable in the chaos of early growth, especially growth fueled by eager and forgiving early adopters. But Blogger is nearly 10 years old. Its ignorance, inattention, or for all I know, hostility, to effective user communication sets a bad precedent and threatens to limit future growth, which depends less and less on the web savvy and more and more on people who just want to get their word out.
Question #1: Who is the target audience for your house-written text?
Target audience. That's the first thing editors want to know—need to know—about a publication or website if the goal is effective communication.
It's the same for marketers, advertisers, and product managers, only their word for audience is customer or client.
Of course, you can't always know everything you want to know about the audience. And even if you could, knowing everything does not guarantee effective communication. But it's the starting place. It provides direction that shapes every decision about organization, vocabulary, voice, length, display type, and other qualities of the written word.
The house text on Blogger reads as if it's written for people who don't need it; that is, for users who are already Blogger veterans. This suggests that the writers are more-or-less writing for themselves and that there's no experienced editor involved to ask the right questions, seek answers, and measure results.
Consciously or not, young and growing businesses often neglect the expense or bother of fundamentals like good written communication. This may be understandable in the chaos of early growth, especially growth fueled by eager and forgiving early adopters. But Blogger is nearly 10 years old. Its ignorance, inattention, or for all I know, hostility, to effective user communication sets a bad precedent and threatens to limit future growth, which depends less and less on the web savvy and more and more on people who just want to get their word out.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Six Questions for Blogger
But first, this statement: I’m new to blogging, and I'm impressed. Getting started on Google’s Blogger is quick and easy. It's a cinch to name the blog, check template options, and start entering text. So, a bow to the creators, engineers, and product managers behind this media resource as it approaches its tenth birthday. (Blogger launched in 1999 and was acquired by Google in 2003.)
There's more, though, to becoming a happy Blogger (with a capital B) than picking a template and writing that first blog. If Google's Blogger earns an A for "Getting Started," it gets a D- for follow-through.
This adopted child, I'm sorry to report, shows unmistakable signs of parental neglect. When I mentioned this to web-savvier friends, including some Google staffers, they shrugged as if this is old news. Several urged me to check out Wordpress, an alternative blogger site.
Here’s the biggest sign of neglect at Blogger—of course, it’s related to writing quality—for a neophyte like me: If you want to customize the look and feel of your blog, you soon discover that the information provided by Blogger is not only inadequate, it's inexcusably amateurish. Coupled with bewildering or missing tools and circuitous paths to check or modify your work, this shortcoming is maddening.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind the informality of directions and explanations on the site; in fact, I prefer it. But effective informal writing depends on knowing the rules, and whoever’s writing or editing Blogger text doesn't seem to be aware of them. So... my Six Questions for Blogger. I’ll address these further in upcoming posts.
My Questions...
1. Who is the target audience for your house-written text, for example the text displayed on the “Basic” page under the “Settings” tab, including “Let search engines find your blog?” and "Description, among others?
2. Are you familiar with the editorial verity, "Writers and editors know more than readers"? Are you familiar with any editorial verities?
3. Are you aware that there’s a difference between American and British punctuation? If so, why do you use British punctuation, which, incidentally, is not the norm on other Google sites?
4. Is style consistency in written text—generally considered helpful, even essential, to effective communication—valued at Blogger?
5. Are your writers and editors familiar with in-house stylebooks for published—posted or printed—texts?
6. What's the process for writing and reviewing house text at Blogger before and/or after posting?
There's more, though, to becoming a happy Blogger (with a capital B) than picking a template and writing that first blog. If Google's Blogger earns an A for "Getting Started," it gets a D- for follow-through.
This adopted child, I'm sorry to report, shows unmistakable signs of parental neglect. When I mentioned this to web-savvier friends, including some Google staffers, they shrugged as if this is old news. Several urged me to check out Wordpress, an alternative blogger site.
Here’s the biggest sign of neglect at Blogger—of course, it’s related to writing quality—for a neophyte like me: If you want to customize the look and feel of your blog, you soon discover that the information provided by Blogger is not only inadequate, it's inexcusably amateurish. Coupled with bewildering or missing tools and circuitous paths to check or modify your work, this shortcoming is maddening.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind the informality of directions and explanations on the site; in fact, I prefer it. But effective informal writing depends on knowing the rules, and whoever’s writing or editing Blogger text doesn't seem to be aware of them. So... my Six Questions for Blogger. I’ll address these further in upcoming posts.
My Questions...
1. Who is the target audience for your house-written text, for example the text displayed on the “Basic” page under the “Settings” tab, including “Let search engines find your blog?” and "Description, among others?
2. Are you familiar with the editorial verity, "Writers and editors know more than readers"? Are you familiar with any editorial verities?
3. Are you aware that there’s a difference between American and British punctuation? If so, why do you use British punctuation, which, incidentally, is not the norm on other Google sites?
4. Is style consistency in written text—generally considered helpful, even essential, to effective communication—valued at Blogger?
5. Are your writers and editors familiar with in-house stylebooks for published—posted or printed—texts?
6. What's the process for writing and reviewing house text at Blogger before and/or after posting?
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