Has your writing gotten better with blogging?

[ses5909]

Before blogging I used to primarily write tech documents but it usually has plenty of prose. Sometimes I feel like my writing has improved and other times I feel like it's gone to crap and all I am writing are lists xD

[jMcQuarrie]

I'm hoping my writing will improve, but I don't think I've been at it long enough yet to be able to tell...

I'd love to be able to write like the tremendously talented Mr Stephen Fry over at Stephen Fry (http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/) (though I don't think I'd ever be able to keep up the quality of writing if I was composing posts of that length...)

[snookca]

Mine definitely has. Not that it's fantastic but I definitely think about how stuff gets structured and how easily it reads. I certainly work harder at writing now than I ever did in high school. It's funny how so many things seemed irrelevant back then that I actually use every day now. ("the english language? how irrelevant. reading and writing? how irrelevant." Yeah, I was an idiot as a teenager apparently.)

[fatnewt]

I think I'm gradually improving.

[Jeremy]

I'm sure my writing has improved in general over the past year, but the largest improvement I've noticed is in writing for the web specifically. I can tell just by going back to my old posts from last year and compare it to the stuff I write today, and it is night and day.

Writing for the web has to have a visual element to it. Creating easily scannable content with emphasis on certain words or phrases, bold, headings, italics, etc. all play an important role. When I first started, my writing was more or less what you would see on paper, ,and it clearly did not translate very well on a web page.

[Michael Martin]

I think so. I haven't been doing it long enough to really know for certain, but it has caused me to learn a lot more about good writing. I was always good with grammar and a wide vocabulary and such, but the internet has definitely taught me to write better introductions, and write more consisely. I know that my writing was a lot more waffly offline.


Of course, it has also had a negative effective! The number of times I've been writing something on paper and wanted to italicize it, add a smiley etc. is unreal. That formatting can add a lot of personality to your writing, which I enjoy. :)

[rodaniel]

My writing skill has always been pretty good - I always enjoyed classes in school & college where paper-writing was required - but I do think that my writing style has improved with blogging. I think my writing in the past was rather stiff and I think (hope) I've managed to loosen up a bit...

I'm still fairly picky on grammar tho...

I do think that blogging has played a part in improving my Googling too. I've always been pretty decent at research (even back in the card catalog days) but my search engine usage skills have steadily become more accurate & efficient.

[shyflower]

Oh I wish, but I think my writing skills have reached the Peter Principle! :/

[Golgotha]

Absolutely, no doubt about it. In the last nine months my writing has greatly improved - sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and all the rest. All that stuff I paid no attention to in school.

I don't think I will suddenly turn into J.K. Rowling or anything, but it's definitely better.

[Harrison]

Yes, blogging really improves my writing even though I still have some grammar mistakes on my writing. Besides that it also make me easy to present my ideas in words, I think this is a great skill to make money from internet as most of the selling is done in words.

[Megan]

Oh I wish, but I think my writing skills have reached the Peter Principle! :/

= Fantastic!

[sleepyhead]

Yes of course, You are writing stuffs in your blogs then you're posting it without proofreading? Then when you have seen the mistakes, you'll know it the next time.
\:D/ :'"

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[kingjacob]

I'd like to think Im a naturally good and creative writer and thanks to 4 years of college prep and now college itself, Im pretty good at grammar at well. But even though I was already a good writer beforehand blogging has helped me improve cause writing to(not for) an educated audience is alot different than writing to the masses.

[Selkirk]

I think my writing has improved.

I had been writing my blog for a while before I started writing the Test Pattern column in php | architect. I think the blog has helped me with the column. In my blog, I have always tried to use a style where I imagine myself having a conversation with the reader. I think this has worked well for the column as well.

I think the biggest thing I learned from blogging was to ask questions of the reader. In a blog, you have the opportunity for immediate feedback. There is almost no feedback from a magazine column.

However, you can anticipate parts of your writing that may cause the reader to ask questions and then answer them yourself. I do this in the column. In my blog, I might anticipate the question, but leave it unanswered in order to draw comments from my readers. Or I may ask the question in my blog, even if I feel I already know the answer.

Micheal Martin, if you feel blogging has influenced your "real writing," imagine what programming will do to your writing (http://www.procata.com/blog/archives/2004/11/16/programming-has-warped-my-writing/). Looking back at this post of mine from 2004, reinforces my belief that I am a better writer now. ;)

I think the thing that I miss most from blog writing when writing my column is the ability to use a hyper link. In a blog post, rather than explain something, you can just link to a good explanation of it. In a column, if you reference something, you have to describe it or explain it yourself. This can actually interrupt the flow of what you are trying to say and makes organizing a column more difficult than a blog post. (IMHO)

[dojo]

I have started writing more and more and I can sense some improvement. Experience makes it better

[berlinlife06]

In a way, blogging has given me a new "voice" to write. I am a writer so I've been writing for a long time, but blogging is just different. I can be very intimate or I can be very private. In any case, it is definitely a personal experience that I'm enjoying.

[deronsizemore]

Yes, I think my writing has improved. I definitely pay more attention to my writing now, that's for sure. Before blogging, I really didn't care, but I find myself stressing over the correct placement of commas and apostrophe's now and Googleing to find the answers. lol

This site seems to have some good free examples of punctuation and grammar rules if anyone is interested: English Rules | Grammar Rules | Punctuation and Capitalization Rules (http://www.grammarbook.com/english_rules.asp)