THE METABLOG looms over the horizon...

Let me start off by acknowledging the big changes in the “format” of my blogs over the past 2 months.  At the beginning of the year, my blogs were very formal.  I combed over them for spelling before publishing, which I clearly don’t do anymore, which is evident in the few errors that have been made in my more recent blogs.  Also, I wrote like a college professor.  I wrote smoothly then, and the blogs that I have written more recently kinda sound like somethin’ that’d come outta my mouth.  This may be viewed as a negative.  Certainly there are some negative aspects, but I view the overall change as helpful to my progression as a blogger.

            Let’s start with an example.  Here is the first paragraph, and first sentence of the next one, from the first blog I ever wrote, which was titled “How to Write a Blog”:

            During AIS class this week, one topic that we discussed was the weekly blog posts that we would be writing throughout the school year.  There are many guidelines to writing our blogs in this class.  Many of these guidelines are perfectly understandable and valid.  However, I always thought that the reason people wrote blogs was so they could voice their opinion without being held back by anyone.  To find out more about what is really important in writing a blog, I did what any new, confused blogger would do: search the internet for tips on writing blogs.

            After looking at several links, I determined that the one I would be using was http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/07/13/how-to-write-excellent-blog-content-what-we-wish-we-knew/. 

            When I wrote this, I remember thinking “Damn I’m good!  This blog thing’s gonna be easy!”  Well, 9-6-2010 Reed, think again.  First off, the first sentence could not have been more boring.  So much for hooking a reader in.  After reading that first sentence, I almost didn’t want to continue.  The rest of the first paragraph does a decent job setting up the argument for this post, but the opening sentence to the second paragraph kills me.  I emphasize the facts that (a) I looked at “several” links, and (b) I “determined” the one I would be choosing, rather than just choosing it.  Reading that now, I realize what a suck up I was.  I wanted to get full credit, so I acted like a tool to achieve it.

            Now let’s take a look at my blog from two weeks ago, titled “Is Miami a Cool Place?”  It begins:

            The answer to my title depends on how you define “cool”.

            Right off the bat I’m pulling the reader in.  The title is a question, so he (the reader) is inclined to move on to find the answer.  Woe is he when he finds out that the answer to his question is yet another question.  But this is not a question that I answer.  I say that the answer is how YOU define cool.  So the reader keeps this second question in the back of his mind as he reads on…

            This week during AIS we discussed connotations and denotations of words.  There are many words that have one predominant meaning, but also have one or more second, less known meaning.  Mr. O’Connor mentioned the work “killer” in his blog.  This got me thinking about some other words I use today that an outsider would look at and wonder what the hell I was talking about.  One word is cool.

            Now I link the intriguing (in my opinion) title to what has sparked this question about Miami.  I feel that this eases the reader into the topic, and is preferable to bluntly stating the facts. 

            The rest of my blog goes on to talk about how obscure some of the phrases we teenagers use for “to socialize”.  It started out as a “play date”, then “hanging out”, and now most commonly “chilling”.  My blog ends:

            Maybe when I get to college I’ll be asking friends if they want to salmon together.  That means nothing to us now, but it might in five or ten years.  It seems that the older I get, the words that I use become more bizarre.  Is that a common trend?

            I feel that this whole “salmon” idea is not necessarily formal, but gives the reader an interesting note to end on.

            All in all, other than the fact that my ideas have become less formal, my blogs are somewhat similar to what I wrote at the start of the year.  I still incorporate big words (like incorporate), and all my blogs (besides this one) are similar in length.  Now, must I end my blog like any “good” blogger should: with a question?

-note to teacher, the one I want to be graded/examined is the "Is Miami a Cool Place" blog