Language

On language? Well, not really, but about it. And blogs, too.

I’m often told, especially by those in marketing and so-called new media, that short, off-the-cuff, purely responsive quips and slogans are what people want in blogs. No one, such people assure me, cares about well-considered, clearly written material with a point worth remembering longer than it takes the computer screen to refresh. Those people also tell me that to be relevant one need spew chunks of poorly formed silliness daily. But, why, I ask? I’ve even been told by several people – in live conversation, not virtual – that they didn’t want to have to think critically (they said hard) about things such as politics, economics, human rights, corruption, their food, the environment, life. At all. They wanted just to get out of work and vegetate. Nothing more every day. Seriously. They said all that and meant it. The sad thing is that those people had considerable money to play with and still admitted a keen lack of interest in and concern for or about the rest of the world.

My blog is probably not something they or others like them would care to read. What I post is not simply reflexive. Yes, the work is in progress, not to be considered final or properly publishable in that old-fashioned way implying print. Today’s popular cultural norm might include thinking that everything must be given and gotten everywhere instantly, but, for all the errors or things I’d change were they intended for real publication, my entries are never generated without some measure of thought and concern. Grammar and vocabulary serve important purposes, as Lewis Carroll admitted and even today’s mathematicians accept. To be clear one must usually write correctly or well, especially where literary art takes liberty with form or words to illustrate a point to great effect. Pithy, yes; clever, indeed; truncated and incomplete: absolutely not! If the thought or facts require full sentences and proper bloody paragraphs then so be it! Most of the time…

This is as knee-jerk as I get. In other words, this is a blog piece, a riff of conversation; words subject to revision according to the thought and meaning intended. Anyway, that’s all for now. Three-hundred-eighty-four words or thereabouts, including the closing. Have fun!

Good reading and good day.

Brian D. Sadie
14 July 2012