Growling Again

Our preparations for my surgery continue. I ordered Dragon voice recognition software that will allow me to handle email as well as continue to write my posts. Of course, those post-surgical posts may be less than coherent and contain voice-recognition contextual errors. If it works, you will hear from me fairly soon after the operation.

I have no illusions that the world will stop spinning on its axis if I don’t post. I’m not even sure that anyone will care. I like putting my little message in a bottle and throwing it into the Internet ocean. I imagine that some people read our posts the way they used to read columns in the newspapers. My post goes in the morning paper for the commute to work and Mrs. Lion’s is for reading on the way home.

I am a native New Yorker, so I see daily commutes as reading times. I used to take Metro North railroad to and from the office each day. The trip was about an hour. It was just enough time to read the paper. I’m an Internet columnist who writes daily. Even if no one else cares, I would feel badly if I missed a day or more.

Mrs. Fever writes a blog about a variety of sexual topics. Recently, she wrote about being a sex blogger. Her post, “So You Want To Be A Sex Blogger” was a tongue-in-cheek look at some reasons people would want to write a sex blog. It got me thinking about what I think I’m doing.

Blogging has always struck me as a masturbatory exercise. After all, a blog is self publishing with no filter for quality, facts, even grammar and spelling. It’s a free-for-all that permits anyone to put their thoughts out for the world to read; maybe, more correctly, ignore. Blogging birthed “fake news”.

I’m swimming in this filter-free ocean. Almost all blogs on topics similar to ours are embarrassingly bad expressions of misinformation. I lament the state of our education system when I read the way English is abused in the blogosphere. More often than not, bloggers don’t understand that “to” and “too” are used differently. How many times have you seen, “I did this to (meaning also),” when the word “too” is required.

It isn’t that I’m a grammatical nitpicker. Maybe I am. But when you write for public consumption, it’s the same as dressing to go to a nice restaurant. It’s rude to show up in cutoffs and flip-flops. They may let you in, but you are still being disrespectful and inappropriate.

It seems to me that there are two important criteria to meet before writing for the public: First, be sure that what you represent as fact is correct. Thanks to the US President there is enough fake news in the world. Second, take care with your writing. You don’t have to create immortal prose, but at least use your spell checker and understand basic grammar.

My point is that while anyone can write a blog, it doesn’t mean everyone should. I think that if you like to write and for whatever reason want others to read what you say, then take the time to craft your words and use the language correctly. Or don’t. Your words will last forever. Wow, immortality is a few mouse clicks away.

4 Comments

  1. Author

    English grammar and syntax is often what stops me from posting stuff in English. I can write a long text in English and then become very self conscious that English is not my first language and delete everything.

    Can’t wait until translation software becomes flawless. 🙂

  2. Author

    The software will work but it will take some work to get it to know your voice.

  3. Author

    Dear Mr Lion I read your blog and I care and yes some of the English used on the internet nealy make’s me cry

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