Natural Length Writing/Posts

Consistency is one thing editors and proofreaders aim to achieve in certain ways. A style should be used in a certain way throughout a piece of writing. For instance, was "#" or "No." used to represent "number," and if so, if it's repeated, is it the same format?

Some people like consistency in photo size and word length. In a print world that makes sense, because it's hard to change sizes--the production cost might change if you add or remove pages. But for the web, it doesn't matter so much, except for what people expect or accept.

That's why I'm not sure there should be a required length for online writing. Each publication or blog, sure, can have a style where each piece tends to be a certain length. But even then, I don't think it would bother me if the length was different for each post or article.

All that should matter is if there's enough in the content of the piece of writing that the reader will enjoy or benefit from it.

I don't often follow blogs, but the one that caught my attention for a while is probably one of the shortest: Smart, Pretty, & Awkward.

Awesome Word Spotting: Sizzle

Crazy, amusing, and fascinating words are on display in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea. It's actually a fun read for people like me who love words.

Reading that book reminds me to be on the look-out for underused words, the ones that seem to sparkle but aren't as famous or used as much these days.

Here are types of words to watch for:

• A word with meaning that can carry the weight of three or more words;
• Words with enjoyable or interesting connotations;
• Words with aesthetic value in a linguistic sense. To learn more, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson has a chapter or two on this.

I don't have the patience or interest to hunt for words in dictionaries, but I often end up grabbing a book to read. When I do that, I'll try to be attentive to any words that stand out. Then I'll share them here.

So, the one that I found today is "sizzle"! I haven't read or heard that word in a long time, yet I hear the sound of what it describes a few times a week. This word caught my eye in Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian, "... the sizzle of this world ..." (page 19).