What’s it been? Venting (Part 4)

FROM PART 3

This is another tl;dr instalment. Woe betide you if you forego reading it, for it contains a number of broadsides that may actually affect YOUR blogging activities.

* * *

VENTING

This is the right time to speak up.

Normally I don’t like to hit back, not especially at blogs anyway, since, as a renegade blogger myself, I know full well how brain-damaged the whole exercise can be.

But man has his limits, as Detective ‘Dirty Harry’ Calahan once put it.

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A little about my personality

You need to know something about me first so you know overall why I’m venting here:—

Be surprised to learn that I’m actually a Type A personality.

You’d never thought so just by the way I mostly carry on, but many people actually think I’m a milquetoast (a timid, unassertive person for those unused to americanisms) because of the way I let things pass 99% of the time.

That is, until they get up my nose long enough. Then they find to their terror that I have a high-velocity explosive temper with a physical speed and agility to match.

• That sociologist on Job No. B08045 received my ‘hairdryer treatment’ at 50% capacity and, boy, was scared fartless.
• That pushy sonofabitch salesperson who tried to sell me barely existent 100gsm-weight coated woodfree paper for US$1,500 a reel (double the market spot price) got a faceful of my 75% temper and almost felt he was being garrotted with No. 3 Piano Wire.

But 99% of the time, I just let it be. Pushing back isn’t automatic even for Type A personalities, you know. Type A’s aren’t psychopaths. Many Type A’s are really patient, easygoing people — so that Type A/Type B theory can go straight into the dustbin.

My life is one long emergency and I don’t have the time or energy to go ballistic at the slightest provocation. I leave that to the great masses of uncontrollable animals elsewhere.

‘They are what they are’

Intellectual discussions don’t normally scare me — not even those well outside my education or training. Trust me, I’m no intellectual. I’m an educated man but I can’t speak intelligently about the habits of others engaged in intellectual discourse. But then again, if you’re like me,** just about nothing should scare you.

** A chopper biker, legally trained, mum telling you to wear long hair after she died, 37 months on crutches, two months in a neck brace, and 114 years of printing legal documents for government-approved financial scams IPOs.

Personally, I’m not terribly fond of intellectuals or academics, especially the more egregious types. They are what they are, as the Italian phrase puts it rather well. I take their facelessness at face value, enjoy their foggy and oracular discussions for what they’re worth, have a larff, and move on.

Not to bottle things up

People who know me even for five minutes will know I’m not the type who holds a grudge against anyone — for sure not over the Internet — mainly because I operate on two principles:

1. outlive them so I take pleasure in seeing them squeal and die before I do
2. die early myself so I don’t have to breathe the same air as they do

However, I tend not to bottle things up. Yet I’m not exactly disposed to implement advice like ‘Don’t hold back’ either.

Truth is, I’m 88% easier-going than 95% of Type A personalities, 77% of lawyers, or 51% of bikers (of the motorcycle variety).

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A little about 1.67%

Like I mentioned in Part 3 already, I’ve been following some 300 blogs and mailing lists of all types (via email, naturally) for (much, much) more than a year — and only 1.67% of them manages to upset me. But it’s out-and-out 99% upset.

They’re only blogs, right?! What the hell?!?

You’d be surprised just how talented some bloggers are at disruptive behaviour. You’ve got to hand it to them to actually get others to lose their rag over the Internet.

Out of my 300+ follows:

• around 50 on language, grammar and/or linguistics
• maybe 25 on various countries or other languages
• maybe 25 on China
• a dozen or so on Hong Kong
• the rest are on cool stuff that pleases me (food, drink, bikes, chicks, cats, graphic arts, travel, music, gigs, news, porn, etc).

Certain issues need to be addressed regarding 1.67% of those blogs.

Tense humour and ‘the pits’

My biggest source of dismay and consternation (in a word, distemper, in the English literary sense, not the biomedical one) have been:

• linguistics sites or blogs
• China-watching or related sites or blogs

At the meeting point between those two, the worst has been

• China-related linguistics blogs or sites from inside China written by foreigners who think they are ‘Chinese’

While I admire their confidence and knowledgeability in their own spheres, I do not admire their tense humour and the inanity of their commentary.

(I can handle racism, I can handle lack of humour, but I just can’t handle tense humour.)

It IS truly amazing that the Great Firewall of China hasn’t managed to stop those blogs from invading out onto us. Not one bit, given that that firewall has the ability to practically block sunlight.

‘They are the pits’ is my John McEnroe’esque assessment.

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A little about linguanophiles

If you care to pay any attention at all, linguistics, translation studies and pedagogy (education) are highly rigid and rigidised fields.

Of the lot, linguistics is the most rigid and rigidised.

The most hotly contested (and heated) debates in academia today are in linguistics, which fact should help you infer the type of people who populate that field.

Read the sidebar for the key reasons for intellectual rigidity and rigidisation.

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A little about comportment

The most galling thing on many of those lingo blogs is the way the bloggers and their regular dogpile of commenters actually go to extremes and deliberately exclude newcomers or those who simply hold different (though often non-dissenting) viewpoints.

I’m reminded of someone’s insight that, if The Establishment feel so fearful and threatened by a 76-year-old retired gynaecologist like Ron Paul (the American politician), there must be something seriously wrong about your turf.

Offensive antics

One of their more offensive antics is the blogger and his (usually it’s a ‘his’) favourite commenters collude behind the scenes, so to speak, to plot a comment dialogue done in such a way that’s deliberately littered with arcane technicalities that newcomers or uitlanders cannot possibly join in.

If you’ve ever been to boarding school and have constantly been abused there (not sexually, I’m embarrassed to say) or have been handed purposely designed ‘aggro’ as I have been, it becomes extremely easy how to figure out who’s colluding with who. Over time, it becomes second nature and you could do it ‘by remote,’ so to speak.

‘Uncooperative’

This pattern of bad behaviour is not one-off. It’s frequently seen in just about every academically related blog and Facebook thread that I’ve ever visited or got sucked into. The same takes place with some regularity on sites and Facebook groups that discuss sociology, translation studies and pedagogy (education).

Indeed, I myself have been solicited by some lingo bloggers or Facebookers to do just that against some unsuspecting victim. “Give ‘em a break,” I say to these characters, “We’re still young enough to do that.” And then they brand me ‘uncooperative.’

Shaken to the core

I’ve been following a variety of linguistics, language, translation, sociology and pedagogy sites for well nigh on 10 years on a regular basis — in addition to having handled their authors for print publications for roughly the same amount of time. The same repertoire of antics are repeated time and time again. I’ve learnt to time it when antics start kicking in.

It’s disgusting. It’s offensive. It’s highly prejudiced. And these people aren’t even aware that they’re doing this themselves.

I lose my rag, and I really do have it in me to tell them to f@#k off, go to hell, and don’t come back.

Any inherent faith inside you in the goodness of people easily becomes shaken to the core because of seeing or knowing that.

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A little about grace, if not face

The English aristocracy are famous for their grace — the ability to make a person feel really welcomed.

Clearly, the people who run blogs about linguistics, language, sociology, pedagogy and translation studies did not know how to learn that.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such swell intellectualism, and yet ignorant of these simple rules:—

The Golden Rule
Treat others as you yourself like to be treated.

The Silver Rule
Don’t treat others in ways that you wouldn’t like to be treated.

Not unless you’re a sado-masochist, in which case you WOULD enjoy begging to receive pain whilst also enjoying being refused it.

Try mine:—

The Naked Listener’s Malleable Copper Alloy Rule
Go easy on those who think, speak, eat and shat differently than you do because they don’t necessarily have your loaf, gob, eating irons or your porcelain shatware.

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A little about face-off

Sometimes there’s just no way out.

The Naked Listener offers some timely advice:—

The Wax-On/Wax-Off Maxim
“That is the way I do things. If you don’t like it, then find me a driver who WILL comply with the way I do things.”

The English Displeasure and Reprisal-in-Kind Rule
“If my presence here is not up to your standards or expectations, I would appreciate it if you be so kind as to step away from your cheese and crackers for a minute and tell me directly what your requirements or particular preferences are for my presence to be acceptable.”

And remember this:

“If you tolerate this, your children will be next.” (English proverb)

____________________

Your question now must be, why continue with them?

That question is perhaps easier to answer if you care for broadly aimed broadsides in the next part.

____________________

UP NEXT IN PART 5: BROADSIDES

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: Keep Calm/Screw Calm via Sarah C. | ”I have nothing to say” via Cascade Web Development | Good Habits/Bad Habits Signpost via Marketing Leadership Council | ”Once we hit capacity…” via Eddie Codel/Flickr.

Aside: Protips on how to work with an editor

I have been involved in the faggotry called editorial work for a long time, and more’s the pity when it comes to the insane and pointless (and oftentimes insanely pointless) antics of various types of authors whom I’ve had the misfortune and displeasure of working with.

Which is one of the reasons why I switched over to the less profit-challenged (and less pretentious) line of printing. Now as a printbroker and financial printer, I can at least give two fingers up (AmE: the middle finger) to misbehaving clients and tell them, sorry, I’m in manufacturing, not in effing ‘services.’ Now piss off.

Okay, I’m not your typical-looking boss. I’m head of a 114-year-old printing firm, which is only 57 years younger than Hong Kong itself.

I have shoulder-length hair tied up in a ponytail by the grace of my passed-on mother.

I’ve recently donned semi-homoerotic whiskers just to scare off both the gays and the straights. I’m a chopper biker who wears cowboy boots almost daily.

Altogether, those things make me a shagging load more conservative than my architect father and fashion-designer mother, who, quite frankly, were a bunch of faggoty, ‘socially aware,’ liberal-leaning, freedom-lovin’ Liberal Democrat hippies. But Dad drew well even while totally brain-damaged and Mum had good colour sense even while in drunken state on 1963 vintage port, so all is forgiven.

(Get on with it.—Editor)

__________

1. Stop being a f@#king amateur!

The only way to look like an amateur, srsly

You’re just pretending to be a professional:—

• if you don’t know the meaning of ‘pro bono’ while being at master’s or doctorate level
• if you have a lawyer (practising or not) as your editor
• if your editor (lawyer or not) has been ‘servicing’ practising lawyers, bankers and assorted government officials who do high-speed overnight markups on IPO documents for submission to the likes of NYSE, the SEC or various regulatory bodies around the globe
• if you don’t know what blacklining is
• if your editor has been doing editorial AND printwork longer than you’ve been born

— PLEASE DO AS THE EDITOR F@#KING ASK!

Fact: You are doing just one single publication for yourself. An averagely abled editor has on average around 30 publications in ongoing edits (much like an average litigation lawyer with 300 cases at any one time).

An ‘average’ editor has done lots more publications before for others, and have the added pressure of having to edit them in a way to make those publications sell. STFU.

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2. Write one thing, and one thing only.

Writing different versions of the same sentence to describe the same thing in the same copy is always, always the best way to jack up your editorial costs.

Self-explanatory, you sonofabitch, if you notice anything beyond your nose.

Like, man, those on my Job No. B08045 should learn this simple skill.

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3. Finish your draft first.

Never ever for as long as you live do ‘live’ drafting while editing is going on.

Drafting simply cannot be happening at the same time as editing.

Not unless you’re some kind of sado-masochist and prefer to be walloped with ghostwriting charges.

By the way, learn the goddamn difference between a draft and a manuscript. It could save your life.

__________

4. Not your flippin’ PA, RA or TA!

Please! An editor is not your personal or research or teaching assistant!

You know how these lazy buggers operate. It’s worse with the academics. Really. Srsly.

These tight-arsed, liberal-leaning maggots just dump virtually everything on these PAs, RAs, TAs or Whatever-As without so much as batting an eyelid. The As do their markups, their markings, their teaching, their admin, their ‘independent correspondence’ — whatever the hell’s supposed to be done.

Hello! An editor plainly (and plaintively) isn’t for you — more suitable would be a grovelling boyfriend waiting on your hand and foot to sort out your ‘drama.’

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5. ‘Polish up’ your derriere!

That phrase ‘polish up my English‘ (or anything else for that matter) does not exist in the professional world.

(It doesn’t exist in the ‘unprofessional’ world either.)

It’s schoolboy language, and exists only in an imaginary context.

Editing is editing is editing. And editing is billed work.

Stop being a bloody amateur for even five minutes in your miserable life.

Don’t say stupid things like:—

“The first draft was completed at … I sent it to …, with whom I was working on final polishing … This was the first time anyone had read the whole manuscript right through, apart from its author.”
— From an actual conversation with an author

That kind of language really scares the f@#kin’ daylights out of the most hardened editors.

That’s because language like that shows the author hasn’t got it together on three fronts:—

1. not understanding the difference of draft vs. manuscript
2. not understanding you (the author) need to f@#k around with the 1st to 5th drafts before you finalise it into a manuscript and send it off to the publisher or editor
3. not understanding that even one single innocent use of the word “polishing” highly signifies the author (maybe you!) is still living in a dreamworld about what editing is all about

These kind of author-personages are often still stuck in a world of scissors-and-paste longhand typewriter writing mode.

If you’re normally an obsessive personality, there is one time you absolutely must NOT be one — when you’re writing stuff that you know eventually has to land on an editor’s lap. Let the editor develop obsessive personality and have his or her day.

So many times I find young authors (not necessarily in age) who think their agent or publisher will ‘fix’ every ‘mistake.’ Therefore they submit subpar work. Often with disastrous results (and shocking editorial invoices). I’ve been trying to tell these young authors that they get only one chance with each reader at a publishing firm, so they must — absolutely must — submit their very best work.

What to do?

Nurses do triage. Learn to do the same for your copy.

Treat your writing (or the author’s) like a scene of a natural disaster. Good but failed intentions amid disorganisation. It IS natural to have an emotional reaction to such a situation after the first reading of the document

Set it aside and re-read it later. Then you’ll begin to evaluate it more objectively (or at least less emotionally, though it is hard for some manuscripts).

After a couple of more spins at editing work, you’ll be able to separate your personal reaction (hah!) from your professional goal — to help the undeserving author communicate with the uncaring reader.

Editing is an instinctive and instinctual job. You have to rely on your ‘well-readedness’ and your instincts to produce copy that the sales agent next door could sell, and what your publisher tells you (which is often more right than wrong). The copy has to sell, or you won’t get paid. End of discussion.

Plenty of BAs and MAs in Journalism or (Un)Creative Writing are f@#king disastrous editors and have caused publishers and sales agents to lose lots of money. I’ve seen it first-hand. I’ve worked with some of the best in the editing/publishing business and, trust humble me, many solid editors are well read and highly literate but have no more than secondary education. A good editor has a sales instinct usually stronger than your pushy sales agent. If it doesn’t sell, you don’t get to edit the second edition. End of discussion.

I’m reminded of the time way back in my primordial youth of a business letter distributed by my father’s architectural practice. I was around 12 at the time and Dad just got me started drafting business correspondence, about two years ahead of my taking secretarial classes.

Anyway, this particular letter wasn’t written by me. Everyone in the office saw all of the faults and problems in the letter. They didn’t panic, give up on it or fetch out the editorial chainsaw. They determined the letter-writer’s intentions, got at the underlying meaning, and came up with more suitable words to convey the letter-writer’s meaning.

If the job of writing something even a little bit original is too much of a hassle for you (or for everybody else around you), consider getting a ghostwriter to do it for you. All round, it usually works out cheaper and more efficient for you.

(A ghostwriter produces books and articles on behalf of someone else, without their name appearing in the credits. If you’ve read my bio, you’ll know I’ve moonlighted as one.)

__________

6. ‘Drama’ muscle ranking.

Trust me, this muscle ranking of who has the most ‘drama’ comes from years and years of suffering being in the publishing business.

Metallic, but muscles all the same

Those with the highest levels of ‘drama’ in wordswork are:—

1. Grammarfreaks (who, incidentally, are terrible at organising the running order of their copy)
2. Most academics are full of ‘drama.’ Fact. Should be self-evident if you’re over 16.
3. Most ‘intellectual’ types or those in the more ‘intellectual’ disciplines (see below)
4. Mostly academics or academicky types in liberal studies (who are not especially ‘liberal’), such as linguistics, sociology, philosophy, psychology, politics and languages (in that order)
5. Educationists (who are not necessarily teachers or even educated themselves)
6. People whose mother tongue isn’t the ‘target’ language — and the further the mother tongue is from the target language, the more ‘drama’ (so, say, a Chinese speaker is more melodramatic in English-language editorial work than would be a Polish speaker in the same)
7. Marketing types
8. MBAs (but not MAs in Finance and Banking)
9. Hospital administrators
10. Social workers

And the least dramatic (in decreasing order):—

1. Medicine and related disciplines
2. Mathematics nerds, geeks and weirdos
3. Biology (botanists are less tight-arsed than zoologists, broadly speaking)
4. Physics people (whose vocabulary are 95% terms of art, which helps)
5. Chemistry people (whose vocabulary are 90% terms of art, which helps)
6. Unpublished authors
7. Published authors
8. Editors and similar

Do you realise how goddamn long it took me in my miserable life to gem up that muscle ranking list?

Can you even imagine how much all this stuff here came from actual nightly sufferingly hands-on experience paid for in pittance?

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: I Quit via c4c | Girls via c4c | Editing markup via afmarcom | Can’t Relate via Mauradat | Tired of doing it yourself via Write Essentials | Robot Maria from Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ (1927) via Jeffbots.

You don’t blog? (Bonus finale)

FROM PART 5

NO, THIS IS NOT A JOKE. This is the bonus finale to the ‘You don’t blog?‘ series.

* * *

Bonus protip:
BE NICE

Even if you’re not a blogger yourself, be nice to friends or family who are.

If not nice, at least be unobjectionable.

Just because your sneering academically inclined attitude considers blogging isn’t serious writing doesn’t necessarily mean blogging isn’t. Can you yourself put out stuff like they can? There’s your answer.

DO

Make a snack for your friend or family member while he or she is furiously whacking out a story on the filthy, cigarette-ash encrusted keyboard. The Venetian Pauper’s Blood Orange Salad comes highly recommended. At the very least, bring him or her a cup of joe and tissues for wiping tears, for pete’s sake.

Some grumpy shiteheads actually complain about being brought a snack to them because they say it’s their policy not to eat or drink while writing. Then lace their next meal with arsenic.

DO

Blog happily, otherwise it’s not worth the time and pain.

* * *

RESOURCES

Creating image files from documents and webpages

ImagePrinter (or Virtual ImagePrinter) 2.0.1 by Ibadov Tariel
http://code-industry.net/imageprinter.php
Windows 2000 and higher | Freeware (0.9 MB download)
This highly useful printer driver outputs any kind of document (MS Word, webpage) into image format (.bmp, .png, .jpg, .tiff). Extremely easy to use: you just select ‘ImagePrinter’ like you would any physical printer.

Image viewer/editor

IrfanView
http://www.irfanview.com
Windows XP and up | Freeware (1.45 MB download)
One of the world’s top image viewers with ability to edit/manipulate images. It can also handle a variety of other tasks (special effects, reading PDFs, etc) if the IrfanView plugins (8.90 MB) are also installed.

Reading PDFs

Adobe Acrobat Reader
http://get.adobe.com/reader
Windows | Mac | Freeware (66.49 MB download)
The most widely used but it’s bloatware and the loading time is pretty long. Below are better alternatives.

Foxit PDF Reader
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/feature.php
Windows | Linux| Freeware (13.9 MB download)
Almost instantaneous file loading. Install requires only a small hard-drive capacity. (No screenshots.)

Sumatra PDF Reader
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html
Windows XP and up | Freeware (4.5 MB download)
Another small, portable PDF reader. Simple user interface and lightning-fast startup. Can read PDF, XPS (similar to PDF), DjVu (scanned documents), CHM (compiled HTML), CBZ and CBR (comic book archive) files.

Mac OS X
The Mac operating system has in-built PDF display capability, so no additional software needed.

Creating PDFs in Windows

PDFCreator v1.2.3 by Philip Chinery and Frank Heindörfer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
Windows | Freeware (18.16 MB download)
A PDF printer driver to create PDFs from any Windows program. Outputs your webpage and documents to PDF. Basically, Windows will recognise this virtual printer just like any physical printer: only the output will be in PDF.

Creating PDFs in Mac OS X

You don’t need to own Adobe Acrobat. You can print documents, webpages or nearly anything else in PDF directly from Mac OS X 10.6.x (‘Snow Leopard’) without any additional software. It’s built into the operating system.

1. Open the document and press Command+P
2. Click the ‘PDF‘ button at the bottom left corner of the print dialogue box
3. Select ‘Save as PDF‘
4. Click ‘Save‘ in the save dialogue box in whatever location your want

For Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, just open them in their own apps (say, TextEdit, images in iPhoto). Then click File menu > Print > PDF in printing dialogue box > Save as PDF > choose folder and set filename.

For printing PDFs of email messages and webpages, you must use the Safari browser. Then click File menu > Print > PDF in printing dialogue box > Save as PDF > choose folder and set filename.

Editing PDFs (all platforms)

Inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org
Windows XP and up | Mac | Linux | Freeware (35.7 MB download)
An vector graphics editor that will open and edit PDFs. Inkscape is especially useful when your PDF contains vector-based illustrations that require editing. Open Source.

Foxit
http://www.foxitsoftware.com
Windows | Commercial software
Foxit produces a number of Windows programs for reading and editing PDFs. The PDF editors there are paid programs.

Windowsfags say FoxitPro Business (a commercial program) is better than the original Adobe product for creating and editing PDFs.

Macfags disagree and say PDF Studio 7 Pro or Standard (US$85) from Qoppa Software (http://www.qoppa.com) is the PDF read, writeover and securing capabilities going, plus it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.

REALITY CHECK: Adobe Acrobat is still tops when you need full read and writeover capabilities, but the prices are just phenomenal.

Editing PDFs in Mac OS X

Preview is an app built into every Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation for displaying images and PDFs. As a PDF editor, Preview is somewhat basic but gets the job done for most purposes. It allows you to make all sorts of annotations to PDFs. You can draw shapes and write text directly to PDF files (for things like a digital signature).

Editing PDFs online

Many online PDF editors or form-fillers allow PDF editing but only let you to save non-printable PDFs. The non-printable PDFs are made printable after online payment. These two don’t do things like that:—

PDFescape
http://www.pdfescape.com
A free online PDF reader, editor, form-filler and form designer. You only need a browser. Will not handle files over 2 MB or 50 pages. The final PDF document is printable and have no watermarks.

PDFfiller
http://www.pdffiller.com
Another online PDF form-filler that can handle some edits. Printable results.

*

Timeplanning

Timeplanner sheets (A4 size, designed by me)
Download here (152 kB, pdf).

*

Language usage (general)

The Complete Plain Words
by Sir Ernest Gowers (1948) and revised by Bruce Fraser (1973)
(Published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, UK, 1973)

A classic. And miles better than Strunk & White a.k.a. ‘Struck with Fright’ or ‘Drunken Blight’ (an abortion in comparison with Gowers).

Let’s clear the air: ”Plain Words” is NOT a style guide to British English as Strunk & White is to American English, as many [American] linguanophiles (and Wikipedia) mistakenly believe. “Plain Words” is simply a guide to clearer writing, no more, no less.

Gowers wrote: ”The purpose of this book is to help officials in their use of written English as a tool of their trade.” Gower was once head of the UK Internal Revenue Board, so you can appreciate why he wanted British civil servants to express things very clearly when they had to write to the general public on a matter of high complexity to the most of us. It’s also why the book was well-received by many for general writing right from the start.

The linguistics of “Plain Words” mix the prescriptive and the descriptive, which allows grammatical extremists (meaning 99% of linguistics-trained people plus 100% of grammar nazis) to ascribe Gowers a place in the opponent camp (that is, against Strunk & White, which IS a prescriptivist guide).

(Also slotted into Gowers’ camp by grammarfags is A Dictionary of Modern English a.k.a. “Fowler’s Modern English Usage” by Henry Fowler, Oxford University Press, 1926-2009.)

Language usage (for non-English speakers)

Practical English Usage (3rd edition, 2005)
by Michael Swan
(Published by Oxford University Press, 1980, 1995, 2005)

This book sold over 1½ million copies since the first edition in 1980, so it is a major-league usage guide.

Interestingly, this is a standard reference and only one about English usage aimed at foreign learners and non-English speakers who have to speak or write in English. It gives the basics of English grammar and usage, and helpfully focuses on words that for some reason are hard to use by non-native speakers. The model is basically British English, but the author highlights some of the stylistic differences (therefore faggotry) between British and American usage (e.g. the americanised use of ‘like’ as a conjunction such as in ‘like I do’ making headway into British English).

My own opinion is that even native English speakers should read this book because heaven knows I’ve seen too many native speakers more than enough times bungle their own language.

*

Anything else is just superfluous and pointless for blogging.

Whatever you do, forget the grammar, language and linguistics blogs. They’ll only make your blogging (and general language ability) worse than bad.

You have been warned.

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This 6-part series of articles was written by The Naked Listener, with no contributions from anybody other than the images pilfered (but accredited nonetheless). Any reference bearing any similarity to any person(s) living or dead or half-living or half-dead is purely coincidental and unintentional, although the possibility is enormously hilarious. And this is what a shirttail looks like. Heh.

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© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: ImagePrinter screenshot via Code Industry | Foxit PDF Reader via Foxit Software | Sumatra PDF Reader via Sumatra PDF | PDFCreator screenshot via PDFCreator | Mac OS X Preview via Wikipedia | Inkscape via Inkscape | Everything else by the author.

You don’t blog? (5/5: the finale!)

FROM PART 4

In this series’ finale, we’ll look at branding and long-term operation of your blog.

You’re gunna lurve some of the graphics in this part and give you ideas.

Unfortunately, this part is absoeffinglutely brain-damagingly long. But it IS the finale, after all.

And pure gold, even if I do say so myself.

(There’s more?! Shome mishtake shurely.—Editor)

Get some beer and pizza. Take it one bit at a time, like two nervous virgins having sex for the first time on a freezing beach in wintertime.

* * *

PREVIOUSLY…

Just to remind readers just what the hell this series is all about, it’s a response to a question from a newbie noobhead who wants to get into the profitless game of blogging.

In Part 1, we have explained why blogging is still relevant in the age of social media.

Blogging is a ready way to get a web presence. It is your interactive platform to examine an issue or market niche in an fast-moving but in-depth setting, and a transparent forum to engage your audience as well.

Blogging today is very much part of the public communications front of many individuals and organisations. As a proactive and transparent medium, blogging can help build or repair your overall reputation.

In Part 2, we covered the lead-up issues in starting a blog.

Deciding the nature of your blog or your target audience will determine your blog’s topicality and your choice of blog provider. Topical blogs are well-received by readers generally. Your ability to provide visitors with timely and accurate information helps to position yourself as an expert and promote your other websites.

An attractive, memorable blog name attracts visitors. Originality and keywords are important in the blog name. A blog with a good name running on a free blog service is desirable in the beginning, and could even be better than running one on a custom domain.

A basic webpage design is easier to administer than a more ambitious design, and that is preferable in the beginning. Set your newly registered blog to ‘private access only’ until the time is right to ‘go public.’

In Part 3, we looked at the actual mechanics of setting up a blog.

Finalise your essential static pages before your blog goes public. Most important is the About page. Some blogs may require a mission statement. A copyright notice may be applicable.

Readers appreciate both email and RSS as subscription choices. All blogs ought to display an email address for contacting the blog owner.

A blogroll of your favourite websites helps raise your blog’s search-engine ranking and therefore generate more visits.

A Testimonials page is optional, yet it will help reinforce your online credibility.

In Part 4, we looked at the essential copydesk skills needed to keep your blog as a going concern.

A weekly update of around 500 words is a good starting point in developing a more frequent posting schedule and higher or lower word counts as needed. Big features should be published in multipart format.

A flexible and adaptable month-by-month posting plan set up in advance for the whole year will provide regularity and consistency of coverage in stories, thereby advancing the continued life of the blog. Running a yearly biographical sketch of yourself will remind readers of the ‘person’ behind the blog and stoke up reader interest. We showed you some simple steps to develop leads for writing interesting stories.

The quality of writing for posts should be personable and engaging, whilst paying good attention to details of the topic at hand and consideration of your readers’ perspectives. Readers always favour high editorial quality, yet a high literary tone may sometimes work against the essential attractiveness of blogs: entertaining, topical informativeness and decorous informality.

Knowing basic drafting technique helps shorten the turnaround time needed to compose posts. Allow draft posts to ‘marinate’ so as to give yourself time to mull over details, phraseology and other elements and work your stories into first-class publication quality.

Resize your artwork to fit your column width before uploading to the blog servers. Oversized illustrations prolong the loading time of your webpages, thereby losing you visitors and reader goodwill.

Ensure files for downloading by visitors from your site are in correct and safe file formats that do not cause search engines or browsers to detect your blog as a spam site.

Lack of Internet connection is no bar to blogging. Indeed, that could be rethought of as an opportunity to produce more considered, higher-quality posts.

(That’s enough recaps. Get on with it.—Editor)

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10. BRAND YOUR PARTICIPATION

Most of us tend to look back at our school life with some degree of fondness, in spite of the antedeluvian attitudes or even outright detestability of those strangers with shifty eyes and funny noses who lord over or study with us.

In many ways, blogging is a bit like school life.

Just as in doing homework and telling fibs at school, you spend an obscene amount of time and effort banging out lukewarm stories night after night, recounting the minutiae of barely imaginative exploits with over-imaginative but under-promiscuous beach bunnies on your way to and from work.

And just like your schoolmates did about your fibs, you get sussed out by other bloggers, who then proceed to practically ‘flame’ you with the grumpiest, the meanest, the most demeaning and sardonically insolent comments on your own blog.

They steal the thunder from right under your feet — and yet you’re still enduringly grateful to these ingrates for their doing so out of desperation and forlorn hope that your blog actually gets ‘read’ by somebody ever since your blog started 21 years 7 months 15 days 9 hours 22 minutes ago.

You can advance your sorry little bucketslopof a blogging life with the following new and improved protips from The Naked Listener.

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You are par-ti-ci-pating!

DO

Invite other bloggers to guestblog (or ‘guest-bog’) on your little online kingdom — and offer to do the same on theirs. Keep it simple: file your stories by email instead of opening up new user accounts in your blog.

DO

Submit stories to other blogs, websites, newsletters and print publications. If you do get published, this will generate credibility (even fame) for you, your ‘expertise’ and your blog. If not those, then at least ‘excerptise’ (ek-serp-tees) for you.

For that, you might get a ‘southern death threat’ (which, coincidentally, is also the name of a really nice American rock band). At least you’ll know somebody somewhere considers you’re not totally ‘not worth the beating.’

Guestblogging is a two-way street. It gives variety to your blogging routine and theirs. It gives you and them a practical change of perspective. You can create a compelling online portfolio by guestblogging.

It’s also an opportunity for others to ‘blog and flog’: blog lurkers or non-bloggers to blog on your turf without the hassle or long-term commitment of setting up their own miserable blogs.

DO

Attend blogcons (blog conventions). Blogcons are just like any other regular trade event. They are networking events for fun and profit, and sometimes you end up landing a real-life job from the networking. Bring your employer along.

Blogcons aren’t some hippie ‘groupie’ sessions organised by arty-farty illiterates for the ‘counterliterates’ wearing cosplay outfits.

Blogcons are big business and big money.

A blogcon is just like any other trade fair. Indeed, they are usually organised by the same event-planning companies that organise industrial trade fairs, military armament expositions, car roadshows, music festivals and cosplay conventions.

Visitors pay good money for tickets and their spends at the event bring good revenue for the hotels, convention centre and the shops that supply these ‘pretend writers’ with food, drinks, shopping and other sellables. Bloggers are just normal consumers and blogcons are consumer-driven fairs. The networking done at blogcons (and especially at cosplay- and comic-cons) rakes in the cash on the spot.

You need to make your employers understand this.

For instance, the memorably named Clockenflap 2011 music and arts festival I went to was profitable just on sales of food and drink, never mind the ticketing revenue. Just because the attendees there were young(ish) and have shifty eyes and funny noses and wear outlandish garb don’t mean they have no money to blow in pursuit of their own brand of happiness.

Another example: Social Media Week is a major international event held simultaneously across several different continents. Venues are hotels, convention centres, nightclubs, restaurants and other high-class joints. I’ve been to some SMW events. The booze, the grub, the souvenirs and whatnot might come free for guests, but imagine the revenue for the suppliers.

You need to edjumacate your employers about blogcons.

(You’re fired for attending parties during work hours.—Editor)

DO

Learn things (and about people!) at blogcons. Some things you get to see or hear about blogging you’d never even thought of before. It’s good experience for newbies and oldtimers alike.

DON’T

Don’t brag about your blog or show off your pseudo-intellectual literary skills or journalistic capabilities at blogcons or similar gatherings. Some bloggers there used to be senior staff journalists, prizewinning book writers and editors, and famous celebrities in the media business. These are people who make money from their blogs, so you shouldn’t embarrass yourself (or them!).

I once met a nondescript blogger who 20 years before won the Pulitzer prize for some kind of journalism. I didn’t believe him at first, but after I checked him out, he really was what he claimed. Thank god I didn’t insult him or anything.

Another ordinary-looking blogger I met at a mini-blogcon turned out to work for a merchant bank (‘investment bank’ to our American cousins). That blogger eventually gave me a printing order. The price of the order wasn’t thrilling but wasn’t to be thumbed at either: it was good for six months of office rent.

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Corporatistical branding made simple

If you’ve been blogging for some length of time, eventually you’ll have to go on ‘field assignments’ and follow up leads like a kind of ‘pretend foreign correspondent.’

Without some kind of visible identification or credential, a blogger will have a tough time getting access to events and people — indeed often summarily denied it.

But how do you get blogging credentials? It’s not like there’s a Press Pass system for us that journalists have.

You have to make do with some homebrewed workarounds.

ESSENTIAL

Print your blog’s very own business card: blog name, your name, phone number, email and blog URL. Include Facebook and Twitter as desired. Use a proper printing firm for this.

This is the absolute minimum — and likely to be the only corporate branding technique most of you will ever need. It obviates the necessity of you explaining yourself when you could flash a biznaz caaaerd that shows you run a blog. Why else would you get cards printed like that if you’re not a blogger?

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ASIDE: A WORD ABOUT PRINTING

The whole purpose of getting cards printed is to give them away like mad. If they’re expensive to print, you’re going to look visibly distressed giving them away.

Protip on paper: Print standard-size cards only. Use only uncoated paperstock of 120–150 gsm (grammes per square metre) weight. Uncoated cards can double as memo cards in front of your ‘interviewees.’

Protip on inks: Print single colour (’1C spot colour’ in printing parlance). Single-sided is 1C and double-sided is 1C+1C. ‘Warm Black’ is usually cheapest, but I recommend Pantone U-288 Blue (see left) for ‘authenticity’ effect. U-288 is dark enough to look goodly conservative but bright enough to stand out. Frankly, no one needs anything more than single-colour, single-sided printing.

Dont’s: Avoid costly fancy techniques like coated paperstock, full colour (“4C”) inks, double-sided full colour (4C+4C), lamination (glossy or plasticised surfacing), diecuts, rounded edges, gilted edges and so on. The job printer invariably recommends those exact things (“they make your cards look distinctive”) because they bump up your printing bill, okay?

(You’re fired for giving away your tradecraft for free.—Editor)

Lessons to learn:—

I once knew a person who ran a bitty setup selling something and had cards done in 4C+4C (full colour double-sided), ivory white 150 gsm cardstock, matte lamination both sides, rounded corners and a diecut of a star in the left-centre field. Each card costs a cool HK$7 each (or 90 US cents or 57p British money)! Don’t be a blithering fool like that.

Main retail shops also go overboard with card printing. Here in Hong Kong, matte laminated cards are the favourite, which I tell you is the depth of brain-damagedness because you cannot write price quotes on them for customers. Don’t be a fool like them.

Granted that I’m a printer myself and can get away scotfree on costs, my own cards still cost a bloody expensive 17 cents Hong Kong (or 2 cents US or 1p) a shot. Mine are 4C+1C (full colour one side, single colour the other) on uncoated woodfree 120gsm. Your cards (for whatever earthly purpose) should cost no more than half-cent apiece.

And, no, I don’t print my own cards. I farm this out to a job printer for cost efficiency’s sake.

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DON’T

Don’t make fake ID badges or cards, even if it’s for your blog. If you flash one in public, you can get arrested for impersonation (yeah, impersonating yourself!) or prima facie evidence of your intent to defraud. If you put the word ‘Press’ on your fake ID badge, that alone will secure your conviction on both charges. If you did your ID badge online, you’ll additionally be convicted for wire fraud. If you did it offline, that’ll be counterfeiting or forgery. You just won’t win.

Sentences: Impersonation and intent to defraud each carry a fine and one year in the slammer in most jurisdictions around the world. Wire fraud is one more year in the slammer. Forgery carries 5 to 10 years: forgery or counterfeiting usually supersede copyright infringement if you actually used (say) Coca Cola’s logo on a physical item. You can’t plead insanity or ignorance as defence because designing your ID is evidence of your sound capacity of mind and premeditation. Flashing an official-looking but unlawful ID is also arguably a form of criminal intimidation — another year of ‘porridge.’

But, alas, some of you faggots out there still prefer to have an ID card. One possible workaround is to print your blog’s business card in the form of an ID card, which at least arguably is less illegal.

DO

Prepare standing ‘shirttails.’ A shirttail is newspaperspeak (and an americanism) for a brief clause added at the end of a story. Necessary, if your blog is a collaborative effort or if it uses a fair number of guestposts. A shirttail is not a footnote, as many people seem to mistaken it for.

For example, a screenshot of a compilaton shirttail used in my bio:—

 A shirttail may be biographical, a kind of ‘about the author’ for the post writer:—

“This article is reproduced by kind permission of the estate of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi master who played a significant role in the fate of the galaxy during the waning days of the Galactic Republic. Later known as Ben Kenobi during his exile, Gen. Kenobi was born in 57 BBY on the planet Stewjon, the first son of a moderately wealthy family. In French Internet subculture, Gen. Kenobi’s name has given birth to the expression ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ meaning ‘your question does not make sense.’ Gen. Kenobi was killed in action aged 60 and is survived by Mildred, his watercolourist wife, on the planet Coruscant.”

Usually it’s a straightforward factual ‘after-byline’ for the post:—

“This exclusive article to The Naked Listener’s Weblog was written by Sith Lord Darth Vader in Bangkok, with contributions from his Zabrack Sith apprentice Darth Maul in London and The Naked Listener in Hong Kong.”

For a guestpost shirttail, it’s usually semi-biographical and semi-plug:—

“The Naked Listener is the pseudonym of Robert Lee and runs The Naked Listener’s Weblog (http://thenakedlistener.wordpress.com) since around 1995/97. During office hours, he moonlights as a printer in Hong Kong and is legally trained but is not a practising lawyer, thankfully.”

Protip on usage: Use the word ‘written’ (not ‘authored’) in a shirttail. Stop being pretentious.

Protip on usage: Italicise your shirttails. I tend to do it in roman because the italic fount appearance on this blog design isn’t so hot.

Srsly, if you are a professional and blog on professional matters, shirttails add to the overall credibility of your blog. A very short shirttail in every post is highly beneficial in marketing your services, such as:—

“Marianne Dubois is author of this post and an attorney-at-law. She may be contacted at Sue, Runn & Grabbit LLP at the address given in the Contact page of this website.”

Just don’t be long and full of platitudes. Remember, playing softball wins more than hardball.

DO

Prepare a ‘biobox’ jpeg for use as in-text illustration. A blogger inviting you to guestblog usually asks for your bio and a mugshot. A biobox combines the two in one. Look at the Jane Bloggs spoof biobox here and mine below.

Shameless prostitution: I’ll be more than happy to produce a biobox jpeg for your blog if you supply me with your copy and a picture. It only takes me minutes to make one.

(You’re fired for prostituting for free.—Editor)

 A ‘corporate’ image may be relevant for advanced bloggers. The below are optional.

OPTIONALS

Indent cards are postcards bearing your blog name or logo — just like those held on air by TV show hosts. They can double for notetaking use in front of ‘interviewees’ or held up by them in photo ops. Also useful for communicating with people still on snailmail mode. They give off a professional image and help in the pretense that you’re not a fly-by-night cowboy operator who might do a D.B. Cooper.

My own indent cards (photo) are full colour on one side and one colour the other (4C+1C). Each costs me around 3 cents US or 2p British, which is comparable to the cost of a packet of 100 index cards. But then again, I’m a printer and I’m pretentious and need the ‘corporate image.’

Pocket notebooks with your blog name or logo on the cover. Clearly costly to custom-make but they evince a professional if somewhat journalistic image.

Letterheads specially designed for your blog probably takes it right into the corporate realm, especially if you’re hoping (or imagining) your blogging could lead to paid work.

Stickers or banners with your blog name or logo are perhaps the cheapest way to corporatise your blog. Stick them on your notebooks, photobag, property, etc. The major newspapers and news agencies have their gear emblazoned with corporate ID stickers. Make your stickers in square shape (rather than a strip) so they’ll fit any item.

T-shirts with your blog logo or name is something you wear ‘on assignment’ as if you’re some kind of freelance journo. I have two tees like that which I wear on those occasions where I wish to be clearly identified as a ‘staff member’ of my blog.

(That’s enough expensive recommendations.—Editor)

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11. PROTECT YOUR BLOG

Your blog can get hacked or wiped just like any other website. Your blog provider can suspend and delete it for breach of terms of service (BOTOS) because of something defamatory or outright unlawful you wrote.

Alternatively, some unknown mean arsehole out there can report your blog as pornographic or spammy to your blog provider just for laughs because:—

• didn’t like your vocabulary or phraseology (foul words or not)
• didn’t like you for not writing in Chinese (and I get this complaint a lot)
• didn’t like you can write better than they could
• didn’t like your coverage is better than theirs
• didn’t like your insistence that the expression ‘being that’ is grammatical (which it actually is)
• didn’t like your atheistic or religious views on furry little animals
• didn’t like your refusal to post your private sex pictures

There are lots of people out in the blogosphere who would report you just out of spite, to troll you, just for the lulz.

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Operational security

DO

Back up your entire blog once a month. Choose the 20th of every month or some other date so you have a fixed date for making backups.

DO

Create a secondary user account for your blog for ‘backdoor access’ in case your primary login is in trouble or locked out.

I have a secondary user account for my blog, and the secondary login is displayed openly at work so that anybody could access the blog in case of emergency. I have never needed to use my secondary user account.

Any rogue user-luser could only access my blog on that secondary user account. If the rogue pretends to be me and posts something on the blog, it will be easily identifiable by the secondary username and therefore unlikely to have been made by me.

DO

Take screenshots of your more sensitive posts. If your blog gets wiped or hacked, or your arse hauled into court, you’ll have those screenshots as evidence.

OPTIONAL

A Dead Man’s Switch (DMS) post that you continually reschedule forward to act as a public alert in case something untoward or abrupt happened to you. (Read my dedicated post here)

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Your blog and the law

You can blog your insane opinions however much you want, and 99% of the time nobody cares to sue you because 99% of the time nobody reads it. True fact.

Trouble is, there’s the 1% of individuals out there as insane as you are who will take umbrage at your nearly illiterate scribblings and have the wherewithal to haul your goddamn arse in court for a goddamn thorough drubbing.

I have seen this happen to other people and the sight is not very lovely.

DO

Read up about what constitutes defamation, political and criminal incitement, criminal intimidation and sedition because they have particular importance to blogging. If possible, show your draft post to a lawyer.

Many bloggers don’t realise just how much of their writings could be construed as defamatory, inciting, intimidatory, threatening or seditious (or even all of them together).

Likewise, many commenters don’t realise their comments could be legally considered as inflammatory (‘incendiary’ in some jurisdictions).

DO

Know one or two lawyers who specialise in defamation, copyright and online contractual dispute cases. Introduce yourself to them by letter and ask to have their business cards “should I ever have need of your services.” Don’t ask for their fee schedules because it’s impossible in absence of a case before them.

DO

Retain a lawyer and negotiate for a nominal (low) fee from him for ‘lawyering’ your posts. This is especially useful for blogs that cover news, politics or industry developments.

Retaining a lawyer for your blog sounds like overkill, but not when your blog covers potentially suable stuff like politics or industry ‘insider’ gossip. Legal services don’t come cheap, so retaining a lawyer is a major long-term financial undertaking.

You might be luckier if you’re still in college or university. A good idea is to ‘retain’ your pals at law school. You get some kind of protection and they get some kind of experience.

• Write to the law school explaining you wish to have someone with knowledge of the law to lawyer your blog articles before publication.
• Schedule an appointment with a law professor to help draw up a lawyering checklist.

Having blogposts ‘lawyered’ sounds like helluva overkill for a personal blog. But you can sell the idea to the law professor on this sales pitch:—

1. it’s an opportunity for his law students to get some supervised hands-on practice in media and defamation law
2. it’s an opportunity for legal and non-legal types to learn to work with each other, appreciate each other’s perspectives and constraints, as it will imminently be like that in the real world after graduation
3. express that if the law professor is agreeable to the arrangement, you will be more than happy to be used in PR materials of the law school that the undertaking underscores the law school’s or professor’s innovative and pragmatic approach to the training of future lawyers
4. persuade the professor to assign students on a rotating basis for the lawyering
5. the professor will be the tiebreaker and final arbiter in event of disagreements between you and the ‘lawyer’
6. that your blog will credit the lawyering to the law school itself in the early stages and, if things go smoothly and really well, the law professor’s name would be added ‘prominently’ in recognition of his esteem and farsightedness

(You’re fired for not having this post lawyered.—Editor)

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12. REFINE AS YOU GO ALONG

Some people (usually perfectionists) can’t stand being told this advice. To them, this piece of eminently sensible advice is like blowing smoke up their arse and ruin their autopsy.

DO

Write pre-prepared floaters suitable for running at any old time to meet your posting deadline in case you have nothing topical to write about. Good floater topics would be small lifehacks like what kind of corkscrews are suitable for opening six bottles of wine in under 10 seconds (see photo), or ‘notes’ on your ephemeral remembrances (such as mine on an ex-colleague).

DO

Make a style manual for your blog. This is your own usage guide to provide uniformity in the writing and design formatting of posts and downloadable documents. Use an alphabetically indexed pocketbook for this purpose.

Write in your favourite HTML codes, shirttails, decklines, boilerplate phrases, preferred nomenclature, second references, in-line jokes, etc, so you won’t have to hunt around the Internet or rack your brains for them.

No need to make a big hash of it like the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law (a.k.a. the AP Stylebook). Your own stylebook is just a memory aid for your blog. You already know your own spelling and usage preferences (or should).

I have a stylebook for my blog, but I almost never use it mainly because I’ve completely internalised my stuff by dint of long working in printing and publishing work.

Excerpts from my stylebook:—

Aliases (by alias). DW is _____. Mr Wankmatic is _____.

Aliases (by real name). _____ is Skinny-D. _____ is Råtta.

Biobox. Slugged ‘biobox tnl grey dark 233×528′ in Media.

Blog icon. Slugged ‘tnl blog icon’ in Media. 195 × 195 pixels.

Column width. 500 pixels.

DMS/Dead Man’s Switch post. Slugged ‘dms’ in Draft. Reset every 21 days. Include last update date.

Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Naked-Listeners-Weblog/124762890923834

Gravatar. Slugged ‘tnl gravatar’ in Media. 250 × 250

Header image. 500 × 225 pixels.

HTML for big fount. <big> … </big>

Japan. ”The Land That Gave Us ‘Weird’ Since 1957″ (when it should’ve been 1952).

Login (secondary). Username ‘______’. Password ‘__________’. Email ‘______’.

Placeholder photo. Slugged ‘placeholder thumbnail’ under Media.

Solid linespace. Shift + Enter.

Table, 2-column. See draft slugged ‘B09032 2col table’ for HTML code.

Theme. Ambiru by Phu Ly, http://ifelse.co.uk. Showcase at http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/ambiru/

That’s the kind of entertaining, readable stuff you should put into your blog stylebook so you won’t have to memorise them and fill up your brain drive capacity.

Search-engine optimisation (SEO)

Blogging increases your communications. Sooner or later, you’ll end up getting involved in this maddening craze called SEO.

This is a thing most of us don’t really care about. In fact, I don’t give a flying f@#k about SEO and haven’t reached the stage yet to pay even lip service to SEO.

Search engines (like Google, Bing, etc) love websites with relevant, frequently updated content. Search ranking goes up for your blog if your content is always fresh and relevant.

High ranking (especially on Google) largely rests on the number of incoming links — links from another website that points to your website.

For example, if your website has 10 pages but no blog, a search engine will index only those 10 static pages and be limited to the amount of keywords found there. However, if your website also has a blog, the search engine will index each blogpost (plus their keywords) and increase your SEO ranking.

The idea behind SEO is simple: If you post stories of high relevance to your subject area, other websites in your subject area will link to your related articles. The more relevant are your articles, the higher the chance of search-engine webcrawlers finding keywords and search terms. That builds up your link structure and bumps up your search ranking, resulting in a higher profile for your blog. There’s no mystery to this SEO business: you just need to use keywords throughout your posts.

Well, that’s effing dynamite on paper if you’re running a blog that’s heavily focused on one subject or is business-related. What if yours is a personal blog, where you write the first thing that comes into your head? There’s not a whole lot of keywords to index on.

The odd thing is that many SEO websites themselves don’t rank high in search-engine positions. Or maybe I’m missing something, no?

The Naked Listener’s Weblog is a personal lark. I write about a whole lot of things in the most brain-damaged way conceivable. There aren’t many ‘relevant’ keywords to feed the webcrawlers, which is why the blog has low muscle ranking. But I’m pretty sure you’ll agree this blog is nicely done all round and ‘relevant’ to many people, just not by the numbers.

SEO. It’s dynamite. It blows you away. Permanently.

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BONUS PROTIPS

Some more protips that got left behind in the earlier parts.

Coverage redux

Some further coverage ideas:—

Prepare advance posts on neighbourhood or school events but run them at a date to coincide with their opening. Pretty soon you’ll be famous for having your ears on the ground.

Music festivals with whacky pictures of whacky people doing whacky things.

Maxims to live by. Or not.

Obituaries prepared in advance of famous people or just your teachers, school bullies, etc, who’s quite likely to kick the bucket any moment now that you’re all grown up.

Interview friends (or their friends) who do something well or interesting. For example, I have a coincidentally female friend who is a self-taught electric guitarist with virtually a crush on American guitarist Joe Satriani. I’m planning on interviewing her about how she got turned on to playing the electric guitar, making her one in a million in Hong Kong where the preferred hobby of 90% of Hongkongers is property or forex speculation.

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Web operation

Statistics page

This is a static page to show blog stats so visitors may have an idea of how your blog is faring. Add to month-by-month figures as they come round. Different blog providers provide different stats. See the bottom of my January recap for an idea.

Widgets

A widget (or software widget) is a small application that is installable and runnable within a webpage. See my widgets at the bottom of every page on my blog. A couple of them point to third-party sites and use their external services:—

1. Date at my location
2. Unique visitors
3. Locations of visitors to this page
4. Follow on Facebook

Too many external widgets will slow down your page-loading speed, especially if those widgets use Flash or some kind of Javascript.

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Copydesk revisited

Learn some of these extra copydesk skills:—

Offline blogging

Like I said, lack of Internet connection is no bar to blogging. When you draft longhand, leave a wide(ish) righthand margin for edits and additions. (Left margin for lefties.) Helpful for those who still draft in paragraphs, a way not particularly amenable to amendments later (which is exactly why drafting by paragraphs is brain-damagingly still taught in academic writing).

Slug-naming conventions

Name your slugs properly. Eight characters or under is perfect, though not always possible. There are slug-naming conventions:—

Prefix ‘adv’ (e.g. advsmith) means an advertorial paid for by your client Smith & Co.

Prefix ‘am’ (amfestival) means a post that must run in the morning. Remove the ‘am’ on actual posting. Same deal with ‘pm.’

Prefix ‘cx’ (cxjohnsmith) means a correction to an already published post slugged ‘johnsmith.’

A dated slug (feb21bongo) must run on a specified date (e.g. 21st February). A story slugged ‘feb21paxleocenturion’ while in draft status is a guestpost from ‘leo’ on the movie ‘Centurion’ that must run on that date. Remove the ‘feb21′ at posting time.

Prefix ‘flot’ (flotwinecork) means floater while still in draft status. Remove the ‘flot’ on actual posting.

Prefix ‘pax’ or ‘gp’ means incoming guestpost. A story slugged ‘paxtnlcenturion’ is a guestpost from blogger ‘tnl’ on the movie ‘Centurion.’

Prefix ‘rando’ (rando22) means ‘R and O’ (review and outlook), which is a review of the stories you read during Week 22 plus your predictions — if you’re in the habit of writing reviews + predictions, then forget about ’roundup’ (below).

My biobox

Prefix ‘recap’ (recap22, recapaug) is a recap or roundup of your own posts for Week 22 or the month of August. Learn English: you ‘recap’ your own stories but ‘review’ those written by others.

Prefix ’roundup’ (roundup32) is a roundup or review of events or stories you read for Week 32.

Prefix‘site’ (siteblogroll) is a site update post on your Blogroll page. If your site update is about About, Blogroll and Testimonial pages, use the first named (e.g. siteabout) or something descriptive (e.g. site3pages).

Suffix ‘side’ or ‘sidebar’ (greenside or green-sidebar) is a sidebar to the main story slugged ‘green.’ A sidebar is textual information placed next to an article, graphically separate but with contextual connection. Not generally relevant in a blogging situation (since blogposts are individually posted) but some designs may allow text-in-text insertions.

Prefix ‘xp’ (xpleoscomma) is a crosspost from your other blog named ‘leos’ on the comma.

Copydesk lingo

Learn some of the copyeditor’s language. Know terms like a/w, biobox, blurb, byline, bybox, chart, correx, dateline, deckhed, deckline, draft vs. manuscript, flot, folo (not to be confused with ‘folio’), a two-deck hed, lede, obit, quotebox, recap, rando, roundup, shirttail, sidebar, slug, slugline, subbing, subhed, tagline, wirecopy, and when copy is in ‘slot.’

Whatever you do, don’t embarrass your friends, guestbloggers or yourself by saying naff things like ‘polishing up’ the text.

__

(Thank god it’s done! You’re fired for wasting webspace.—Editor)

Update 25 Feb 2012: Part 6 is here.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: ”MasterLedZ’s Avatar” by itemforty via tvreeh via Wikipedia | Guest pass via Freelance Folder | Convention goers via Jewellery Net Asia | Pulitzer Prize gold medals by Daniel Erath of The Times-Picayune via Nola.com | Pantone U-288 by Markus GmbH | Gavel via Wooden Toys UK | SEO image via clipclic | Lawyered via Survivor Sucks | Red pen and words via Heriot-Watt University Library (link lost) | Linotype slug via Circuitous Root | All other images by the author.

One lump or two, luv?

THIS IS A SIDEBAR to the four-part ‘You don’t blog?’ mega-feature that’s published since 15th February.

This sidebar chiefly relates to the copydesk advice mentioned in Part 4 of the series.

* * *

Do we use one or two character spaces
after the full stop (period)?

Ask a professional writer or a journalist, and 99% of the time they’ll tell you it’s one character space. Don’t take their word for it — take mine!

Actually, you shouldn’t have to ask. You should have been tee’d up on it at your age.

I happen to be a trained secretarial typist (85 wpm) and shorthand transcriber (25 wpm) as well as a trained typesetter (which is why I’m in the printing business and not practise law). Pitman’s Typewriting courses back in the 1970s taught:—

Two character spaces between sentences when using fixed-pitch founts (such as Courier and those fount slugs on typewriters)

One character space between sentences when using proportional founts (such as in typesetting and on webpages)

If two or three generations of professional typists learnt this since 40 years ago, you’ve got no excuse for not knowing!

“Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left.” — Farhad Manjoo (via turri design)

Never mind the bollocks.

Read this person’s article about why two spaces after the full stop is wrong, if you don’t trust what I tell you.

Another writer tells us HTML coding automatically ignores and corrects the two-space usage.

Truthfully speaking, most blogging services don’t correct and just let it run because the still-numerous battalions of doublespaceheads out there will surely go ballistic at the mere possibility of being ‘corrected’ and will relocate their blogs elsewhere. Not always a good business tactic to correct others, it seems.

Never mind the bollocks.

Since the appearance of the electronic typewriter with proportional spacing like the IBM ‘Golfball’ Selectrics in the 1970s, there’s no need to put in two spaces. Read the full article in Slate magazine, which is seriously on the button.

(I had a green-coloured IBM Selectric II typewriter, made in 1974 and weighed a ton, that I used to use constantly until overuse completely totalled it.)

But here’s a person who takes the opposite view in a rather elegantly reasoned monograph, and used double spacing throughout his text. His reasoning may intellectually elegant, but he’s still wrong.

(Indeed, off-topic a bit here, zeroing in on the minutiae of details and reasoning things out according to some predetermined set of ‘logical’ steps doesn’t necessarily make your conclusions right. You’re just ‘making things fit.’ A lot of intellectuals and academicians are operate like that, to be honest.)

Never mind the bollocks.

Let’s look at the the other side of ‘facts’:—

Xerox Corporation started the DTP (desktop) publishing) craze around Star Wars time (1977) by developing hardware and software that uses typesetting-like elements.

Then came the desktop typesetting program called TeX (pronounced ‘tek’) in 1979 and extended in the 1980s by LaTek (‘laytek’), both using true proportional founts.

Then DTP hit mainstream paydirt when the Apple Macintosh 128K computer hit the markets in 1984. What the Mac used quickly got taken up by Windluzer 1.0 in 1987 (in MS Write) through to Windoze 3.1 in 1992.

Twenty-eight years of using proportional founts on personal computers and there’s a sea of morons out there who still haven’t gotten the hang of it.

Dead slow children!

FACT

All webpages (and your blog is a series of webpages) use proportional founts (unless you customise it to a fixed-pitch fount like Courier or Lucida Console — then you really are brain-damaged). Two character spaces between sentences causes your text to run with ungainly rivers of white space.

Please grow up and keep up with the times! You’re living in the 21st century now. Read my post on draft vs. manuscript.

Some philistines hard up on the brain department say they find it more readable with two character spaces between sentences. Clearly, they’re reading for sentence separation and not the ‘message’ behind the sentences. I’ve noticed this in people for a long, long time.

Predictably, these numskulls point to the wider space between sentences in printed books. That’s handsetting, idiot.

And it’s not two character spaces there either — it’s actually an en-and-quarter space or sometimes an em space.

Modern typesetting output machines since the likes of the Lintoype Model 6 molten-lead linecaster (1965) and the Linotronic 202N imagesetter (1972: the one I trained on) make automatic intersentential space adjustments according to the fount used.

Don’t bother rationalising your preference for two character spaces with me — you don’t know enough about this than I do.

This is how I roll:—

On a computer (and using proportional fount), I automatically, unconsciously, conditional-behavourially, operant-conditioningly type one space after the full stop.

On a typewriter, I automatically, unconsciously etc type two spaces, even when distracted.

Why can’t YOU do that?

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012.

Images: Manual typewriter keyboard via Online Business Blogger | Two-space ban via Doobybrain | Ascii art chick via PingMag | Scribus desktop publishing via Nyutech | Fount spacings via Tom Sarazac | Books by Ian Britton via freefoto.