The art of writing badly

The art of writing badly
: David Weinberger is giving a super keynote to the weblog conference and he just noted that an important factor in the appeal and success of weblogs is that they are badly written — giving the audience the sense of both immediacy and intimacy and that the audience forgives the author for the faults of such bad writing.

Absolutely. Add this: There are many webloggers (and I will not name them) write better weblogs than they write columns. That’s because they try too hard when writing columns; the writing becomes less immediate and perhaps less genuine.

Weblogs are a clickstream of consciousness. That is both their charm and their value.

6 responses to “The art of writing badly”

  1. MommaBear Avatar

    How “kind” of him to say: … is that they are badly written — …
    Many good webloggers take great care to write well. If he doesn’t like the more intimate, immediate style, he can say that’s what he doesn’t like, but to state that “they are badly written” as a blanket indictment says he has far too high an opinion of himself.

  2. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Go ahead! Say the name, speak the blasphemy:
    LILEKS
    Is there anyone who doesn’t think that the Bleat (or the Screed) isn’t 100 times more interesting, thoughtful, whatever than the Backfence?
    Whose fault is that, that the unedited Lileks is so much better than the one that has to be written to please some suits (and some suits’ idea of what the readership wants)?

  3. business plan Avatar

    I agree. Nice blog.

  4. Paul Avatar

    Using Weinberger’s logic, I’m so immediate and intimate that I’m in your living room nibbling on your ear. If I give up trying to write well at all, I’ll be sitting in your lap.
    Everyone stop visiting my website. You don’t want me in your lap.

  5. PhotoDude Avatar

    Sarge, don’t ask, don’t tell, and all that, OK? Really.
    Any kind of writing can’t help but make you better. But there are limits.

  6. Bill Peschel Avatar
    Bill Peschel

    I’ve written before on my site (when I had a blog/diary) that newspapers should be running Lilek’s Bleat instead of his political column. Unfortunately, I learned why when I took one of his great 9/11 columns and laid it out on our editorial page. It took up three full columns, top to bottom.
    Of course, if I ran the page, I’d consider that space well spent.