BlogVoice

(I'll add something about the readings later -- this is what's been on my mind yesterday & today.)

So clearly I am not literate in blogging discourse.

I've done this a few times for classes, and people always wind up commenting on how "academic" my blogs sound. I never mean for this to happen - in fact, I was consciously trying to make the last one a little less formal, a little more stream of consciousness. But apparently my everyday voice is overly correct (what does that mean -- too Standard to be normal?). What's odd is, when I was "authentically" blogging with a group with college friends, that never happened -- they must have just been used to the way I talk in real life, which is a lot like the way I write, or else my diction didn't seem out of place for our discussions.

When I hear people commenting on how my posts sound, I feel my hackles raising and I hear my interior voice say, "That's just how I talk! That's just how I write!" But then I got to thinking -- that's exactly what adolescent students say when their teachers complain that their writing isn't appropriate to the situation or genre. Evidently, my writing voice isn't appropriate for blogging, and I haven't been able to develop one that is more suitable. I was sharing this with my PEOPLE students today as we talked about considering your audience, purpose, and genre before/as you begin writing -- just talking about how the experience was helping me understand how they must feel in the classroom when they get those kind of reactions to their writing voice.

I was trying to experiment with color, size, font, and links to get a feel for BlogVoice. But I think it comes down to the same things I've been harping on with the kids: vocabulary and grammatical style (including sentence structures). I think I would need shorter and less complex sentences, less technical/arcane vocabulary, etc. So do I value the opportunities afforded by this genre enough to work to develop BlogVoice?

No, for now, I think not.