My brain needs to understand that writing a blog is not equivalent to writing a paper.
Warning bells ring wildly in my academic-driven-pedantic-mind at the use of a
negative in the sentence above. I am disallowed from using "not" in my research writing. A sacred rule that simply must be obeyed. Surely, I can rely on my moderately expansive vocabulary to pen a few words that less than five people read (I include myself twice in this list), without resorting to a thesaurus.
Know your audience and style your writing to suit them. Does this apply to a blog ? As mentioned earlier in Section 3.2 (sheesh), there are about three readers - my mom, my brother and my cousin.
Amma cherishes each post just as a mother will. My brother on the other hand - a famous, successful blogger (with his own fan club on orkut!) - occasionally graces my blog to reaffirm his superiority in the blogger world. I have had to bear taunts such as "I think by blog-rolling you, I have significantly increased your traffic". Maybe he used a different word -
significantly fits better in an experimental-results-section. My cousin - an intellectual who loves a debate - chooses to respond to only certain posts that suggest potential-world-wars. This is a confirmation of his elitism. And I mean that in a good way.
So going back to the rule of knowing your audience, the reader (if you did make it this far and are not related to me, thank you *sniff*) should infer that this rule is pretty pointless. I truly believe, a blog is where the writer is the reader and writes because she adores sentence construction, revels in self-mockery and harbors a secret feeling of superiority over all blogs that have less than 3 readers. I think I have managed to "untrain" my writing just a little bit. The title of this post bears little relation to the contents. Reminds me of my research work! :-)
Labels: research writing
