"I suppose it made sense, when blogging was new, that there was some confusion about voice. Was a blog more like writing or more like speech? Soon it became a contrived and shambling hybrid of the two. The 'sort ofs' and 'reallys' and 'ums' and 'you knows' that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon. We weren’t just mad, we were sort of enraged; no one was merely confused, but kind of totally mystified. That music blog we liked was really pretty much the only one that, um, you know, got it. Never before had 'folks' been used so relentlessly and enthusiastically as a term of general address outside church suppers, chain restaurants and family reunions. It’s fascinating and dreadful in hindsight to realize how quickly these conventions took hold and how widely they spread. And! They have sort of mutated since to liberal and often sarcastic use of question marks? And exclamation points! 'Oh, hi,' people say at the start of sentences on blogs, Twitter and Tumblr these days, both acknowledging and jokily feigning surprise at the presence of the readers who have turned up there."
—Don't blame David Foster Wallace for the way we blog now, but it is totally his fault.
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It probably goes without saying that while this is very intelligent and insightful and most often correct and also a pleasure to read, I don't agree with much of what our friend Maud here says about the whys the ways we write, nor do I believe it's specific to the medium.
@Choire Sicha Your way of using the exclamation point was sui generis and is pointed and prickly and often brilliant. IMO, you are the David Foster Wallace of the exclamation point used as you use it, which means that you should do it as much as you like, in the way that you do, but everyone else should take a good, hard look at that "And!" before they post it.
That being said (despite it not needing to be said!) I'm going to read it again, because it's all so nicely packed and thoughtful and I want to absorb it all slowly, in a very non-web way.
@Choire Sicha She's practicing what she preaches — simple, direct sentences. And I'll add, simple direct sentences that make the reader less interested in their author than in their meaning. And chrissakes, isn't that the point?
@Annie K. She is! And I suppose it is. It's not how I roll (LOL) but I love it/her.
@Choire Sicha We can argue about this if you like — your own sentences' style is part of their meaning, I think — but let's don't.
@Annie K. FIGHT! FIGHT!
Dancing with myself, oh oh, dancing with myself!
@Choire Sicha Let me join in. I don't think the renaissance of the exclamation point is a bad thing like Ms. Newton seems to imply it's a bad thing. There's a happy medium between overuse and underuse!
@boyofdestiny She's taking a very good and much different point though from certain OTHER people who have gone in against the exclamation point.
@Choire Sicha You're not wrong. I just get defensive about my precious exclamation point, I suppose. They're trying to take away the semicolon; they'll pry the exclamation point from my cold dead hands.
@boyofdestiny : Pleasantly, there is no criticism of caps for emphasis. Because it's rude to yell in real life, but DAMMIT SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO MAKE A POINT. Thanks, Internet!
Just want to point out that the piece is by Maud Newton, and is in the NYT Sunday Mag, so I'd say congratulations are in order. If for nothing else than making Choire squirm a little.
@brent_cox No, this is HUGELY A GOOD THING! <3 <3 <3!!!
As one of those weird blog-types that has a journalism degree from one of the better J-schools, I think I always have struggled with voice also. Sentences that have "I" as the subject have always been anathema to me, but the nature of blogging was to speak about what one knew (or at least knew enough about from which to form an opinion). My purpose was always to put out either stories that lacked attention or points of view on stories that might have had a mass opinion which needed countered. Over time, especially with the growth of the commenter and regular reader, how can you not turn conversational? If anything the conversational aspect grew from the conspiratorial sense of "here's a story that you and I will want to know, friend".
@Rod T The above is more a comment on my shitty mood today than anything else.
I thought Choire was to blame for all this. I thought Choire was to blame for all this? I thought Choire was to blame for all this!
@jolie I THOUGHT CHOIRE WAS TO BLAME FOR ALL THIS.
@boyofdestiny skdfh9823759oishafkajhfk BANANAS!!!
And here I thought the "Oh hi!" business was a Tommy Wiseau thing.
@jfruh YOU'RE TEARING ME APART JFRUH
@deepomega I seem to remember it from tv. Early 80s SCTV or SNL or Letterman X-Mas specials. But I always assumed those were based on actual 60s and 70s celebrity x-mas specials. I prefer it in its full form "Oh hi! I didn't see you there." Which I've seen/heard real people (civilians) doing in (live) speech since I was in high school.
If you don't actually have anything of import to say, but feel the need to talk anyway, style *is* all you have.
I prefer to blame Eggers, not Wallace, for all this.
Doesn't it seem that as the magnitude of information available to us has grown (via the Internet) our willingness to accept responsibility for statements that could be negated by a simple Google search has shrunk? Our audiences have widened and our willingness to offend has lessened. Qualifiers are all that we have to save us from the hordes who would pull our sentences out of context and parade them in the streets like traitors.
@plumap Maybe.
@Alex Balk Yeah, thanks for that.
I've been blaming DFW for the internet for YEARS.
I didn't actually read the linked article (so just go ahead and shoot me now, as I no doubt exemplify the worst aspects of what the author was talking about), but if I have to read another article about how the internet is causing the downfall of civilization, I think I'm going to… yawn.
My favorite DFWisms are "w/r/t" and footnotes that contain only an exclamation point.