Tyler’s Toolbox

As a kid, I enjoyed producing written word. I hated the act of writing, but I enjoyed looking down and seeing my words on paper — and feeling like I’d accomplished something.

I suppose that distaste for the act is why I tended to gravitate towards the quick written word; despite all it’s errors and mistakes, a piece could still be beautiful… acceptable… worthy of praise.

But (for good reason) society and the world of work has so few uses for the quickly written, un-edited word [1]. So my writing has gravitated towards outlets like Twitter instead of this blog (where I believe the average post takes roughly 1-4 hours, depending on the subject matter, to create).

Given my long disgust with the writing process, It doesn’t surprise me that this is the case, but it does surprise me that this is changing.  Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about writing, and I’m starting to love the act of sitting down and creating — hell, even the act of editing.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me — but I think I like it.

[1] For a good defense against the quickly written word, read friend Michael Gruen’s post about “Word Sushi”

I remember vividly an 8th grad English class taught by Mrs. Raymond and Blach Intermediate School. She was instructing us on how to use quotes in a persuasive essay. Now I’m a bit of a style geek so I actually found this talk quite interesting. The basic idea here is she wanted us to use quotes as if we were speaking, rather than proving something we’ve said. So quotes would continue the flow of the essay and not be an break in voice or style. This same phenomenon is going on currently with links.

While you do see the obligatory link (www.link.com) and you often see links, here. But increasingly you see that people are simply listing the link within context. I’m sure this is due to the increasing Tech Savvy of your everyday person — but it brings up a very interesting idea to me. Clearly there are clear style rules for coding (w3c jumps to mind), but will we standardize writing style online?