"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Friday, April 25, 2008

Brevity

I am sure I give plenty of people good reasons not to read this blog. One positive attribute I generally try to hold to is brevity. (Let me know if I don't meet that criteria in your book.)

And so I agree with Steve Dekorte's assessment of bloggers that write entries that are just too long for my patience. Steve names one blogger in particular who I unsubscribed a good while ago after a brief trial period. There are a couple others I could name.

I'm not saying they have nothing worthwhile to write about. The people who come to mind for myself do tend to write interesting entries, do tend to have those entries much more widely quoted than anything I've ever written.

All I am saying, before this gets too long, is that I cannot take the time to read long entries that stay on target, let alone long entries that take too long to reach a point or even a subject. And if I don't stop now...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess it depends why you write!

I skip more than half the stuff most folk write on the basis of the title ... and more than half of what's left after the first paragraph, but then I do value what's left ... regardless of the length (although obviously unnecessary verbiage is just that).

... speaking as someone who writes a lot of stuff that I know is far too long for most readers ... but most of those articles are for me :-) other readers are a byproduct :-)

Patrick Logan said...

Yeah, and it depends on how you write. Hopefully the first paragraph is enough to indicate I'd want to read more or not. Too many times I just don't know whether it would be worth my time, and that becomes the indicator that is is not.

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About Me

Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.