EPTWhat happened to the AP style structures where you talk about the most relevant stuff first then add back story and fluff? It tells you the information and if you're only interested in that then you can stop reading after the third paragraph. If the article happened to hook you in and you want to find out more or there were points of interest you weren't clear about then you read on for more information, it's an amazing structure.
Way too few people who have been taught this, presumably, in school uses it on the internet and it makes me want to stab my eyes out figuratively. Everyone seems to have the catchy yet clear title thing down, especially the girl blogs, but too few people write with any structure at all save chronological. If you want to tell me about this cool thing you did with your cat then tell that story in the first paragraph. The stuff about how you picked him up at the adoption home because as you walked by his cage a halo of light illuminated the room and a choir of angels singing hallelujah descended from the heavens in later sections, not before the main point. Also an interesting story but not the one I was interested in reading when I clicked the title link. On that note, what happened to bolding and bullet points? So many things can be better and more concisely expressed as bullet points with bolding than paragraph structure. This has directly lead to the novels people like to write - also know as wall of texts when they fail to hit enter - and especially annoying is a tldr summary at the bottom. If you structure your OP well then a tldr shouldn't be necessary.
Or, as a lot of effective writers, particularly some staffed by teamliquid, do is use bolding and different colors as the in text tldr. But that only works if the topic sentence actually hits every topic. Remember how topic sentences (plural, don't believe that bull they give you in middle school that there's one topic sentence) had to hit every single topic you planned on talking about with a little bit of elaboration as how it related to your overall point? Unfortunately many of you don't. I'm not a stickler for grammar, or spelling, or, believe it or not, structure, despite me going on and on about it; I just wish more people would write more effectively because it's a joy to be a reader of effective writers. I mean, imagine if I had made this blog post in a better format and how much fun it would've been to read. Ultimately hoping for any change is, and I realize this, futile so I guess I'm just venting.
I guess this is particularly annoying because it's international. I understand language barriers leads to suspect English at times but everyone can easily repair how they write and should, at the high school level or above, be effective writers but I just can't find it anywhere.
As some examples, and not calling anyone out, just the blogs below mine: (skipping 2 cause one was low content and one was a literal blog so chronological made sense)
#1:
Title: Orb Deserves a second chance
Me: Ok, why does orb deserve a second chance?
Body:
Hello everyone I am a long time fan of brood war , now watching starcraft 2 .
One of the commentators that got my attention was Orb .
I watch him every time I am on teamliquid , which is at least 2 or 3 times per week .
I only watch esl tv when he casts .
After a while I realized that giving the high quality of his commentaries he has a very low
number of viewers .
Then through the thread in liquid i found out about what he did while he was laddering .
I also heard him comment about the subject several times during his streaming .
And today something happened : while he was laddering on his orb account at around 11:30 AM GMT+2 time, some jack ass in the ladder taunted him in the game chat : "say the word n***** ".
And even though orb was obviously affected , all he did was kept his cool , won the game through a failed cheese of his opponent , and made no comments .
I know what he did back then was wrong , he knows it's wrong , and today, to me, he proved that he deserves a second chance .
I hope this helps him even if it's just by a little bit .
Everything I bolded has nothing to do with why he deserves a second chance. A single bullet point that said, I saw him on stream today where he kept his cool against someone using abusive language and it clearly shows he has learned would've been so much better.
#2
Title: Girl Blog [Happy]
Me: Dawwwwww, y u hapy?
Body:
So I dated this girl 3.5 years ago. It didn't work out because of timing and other crazy circumstances I won't go into detail about. I fell for her so hard and when it didn't work it absolutely crushed me. I didn't date anyone for over a year after that.
Fast forward to 3 weeks ago. I randomly found her on facebook (she didn't have one at the time) and added her. We decided to catch up for lunch the other day. It was like we had never been apart. Great conversation for 5 or 6 hours and it felt like 10 minutes. Met up again tonight for a movie. When I kissed her at the end of the night it was like my whole body was on fire and I'm pretty sure she felt it too. It's not often a person gets a second chance at a missed opportunity and I intend to make the most of it. Whether it works out this time or not at least I know I am not going to have any regrets about it.
I see her again on Tuesday. Haven't been this excited for anything in a very long time.
Fast forward to 3 weeks ago. I randomly found her on facebook (she didn't have one at the time) and added her. We decided to catch up for lunch the other day. It was like we had never been apart. Great conversation for 5 or 6 hours and it felt like 10 minutes. Met up again tonight for a movie. When I kissed her at the end of the night it was like my whole body was on fire and I'm pretty sure she felt it too. It's not often a person gets a second chance at a missed opportunity and I intend to make the most of it. Whether it works out this time or not at least I know I am not going to have any regrets about it.
I see her again on Tuesday. Haven't been this excited for anything in a very long time.
Again, not really relevant. I just want to read the heart warming story about a boy in love, starting with how through facebook a young boy and a lost love met and spent an excellent date together would've been amazing. Talk about how/why the first break up happens at the end, not the beginning.
#3
Title: My friend is voting for Romney
Me: Interesting, wonder what his reasoning is and why you are conflicted with your friend
Body:
So lately I try to avoid political issues as they don't really interest me anymore, but hearing one of my friends share their opinion and as to why they're going to vote for Romney really irked me.
First of all, I'd like to describe my friend. He's not rich, nor particularly smart, nor overachieving. I'd say he's above average, but I could also be wrong on that (he's said some pretty dumb stuff in the past). He's still going to school as a business major, yet has not really managed to achieve anything nor even made ventures out into the real world. However, despite this, despite not knowing his own limitations he believes he's capable of being successful. Now, that's a broad term so let me clarify it a bit. I mean successful in the sense that if he tries he can become a multi-millionaire running his own business, work from the bottom up from humble beginnings, buy his whole family a mansion, retire at 50 if he so wishes, pretty much the whole sha-bang.
Now let me say something at this point of my blog. Life is not simply about you vs. yourself. It's not a single player campaign where you just grind and eventually you'll beat that boss, get the loot, and sit back and watch the credits roll. Some people are born smarter, faster, in better environments. There's limitations involved as well as luck. Meeting the right people, being at the right place at the right time, etc.
That's NOT saying working hard doesn't help. Working hard will let you reach what you're capable of reaching. What we're each capable of reaching is a different story. It's just that some people have to work much harder than others to get the same thing.
Can I ask how many of the millionaires in the world achieved their status through their own determination alone? Romney certainly wasn't one of them. Maybe it's because of popular idols like Bill Gates (although he didn't exactly come from a middle class family and went to community college) that people believe that it doesn't matter where we come from or if we dropped out of college. I mean, no one wants to hear the other thousands of stories about some rich guy who was a son of a rich guy who inherited a bunch of money, right?
That leads me back to another misnomer, perhaps one more related to the title. The fact that people voting for Romney don't believe in having the rich pay more than they do in taxes after all the loopholes and lobbying. That they "deserve" their money because they earned it and it somehow ended up in their bank accounts. Well yes, it's hard to argue that it is indeed in their possession legally (or maybe not). But come on. Are you going to sit here and tell me that those people are somehow worth thousands of times more than the next person? What if someone walked into your school and said "hey, I'm worth more than every single teacher in here combined". Would you nod your head and agree? Did they work harder than the guy who is working 60 hours a week in multiple jobs so that their children can maybe have some resemblance of a fair start that they never had? Are they more intelligent than the engineers who make things that, as far as most of the population is concerned, is done through magic?
Pure capitalism isn't fair. If it weren't for regulation we could all end up being slaves for what some people care. It's the people at the top who set the rules, who set their own wages and everyone else's.
Sorry if this is a bit of a depressing/liberal blog, but the sheer fact that 40% of people believe that, and that one of them happens to be a friend of mine was too annoying to ignore. Hell, I didn't even touch on "job creationism" and how people still put their faith in the same people who are outsourcing jobs or creating awful dead end minimum wage jobs.
First of all, I'd like to describe my friend. He's not rich, nor particularly smart, nor overachieving. I'd say he's above average, but I could also be wrong on that (he's said some pretty dumb stuff in the past). He's still going to school as a business major, yet has not really managed to achieve anything nor even made ventures out into the real world. However, despite this, despite not knowing his own limitations he believes he's capable of being successful. Now, that's a broad term so let me clarify it a bit. I mean successful in the sense that if he tries he can become a multi-millionaire running his own business, work from the bottom up from humble beginnings, buy his whole family a mansion, retire at 50 if he so wishes, pretty much the whole sha-bang.
Now let me say something at this point of my blog. Life is not simply about you vs. yourself. It's not a single player campaign where you just grind and eventually you'll beat that boss, get the loot, and sit back and watch the credits roll. Some people are born smarter, faster, in better environments. There's limitations involved as well as luck. Meeting the right people, being at the right place at the right time, etc.
That's NOT saying working hard doesn't help. Working hard will let you reach what you're capable of reaching. What we're each capable of reaching is a different story. It's just that some people have to work much harder than others to get the same thing.
Can I ask how many of the millionaires in the world achieved their status through their own determination alone? Romney certainly wasn't one of them. Maybe it's because of popular idols like Bill Gates (although he didn't exactly come from a middle class family and went to community college) that people believe that it doesn't matter where we come from or if we dropped out of college. I mean, no one wants to hear the other thousands of stories about some rich guy who was a son of a rich guy who inherited a bunch of money, right?
That leads me back to another misnomer, perhaps one more related to the title. The fact that people voting for Romney don't believe in having the rich pay more than they do in taxes after all the loopholes and lobbying. That they "deserve" their money because they earned it and it somehow ended up in their bank accounts. Well yes, it's hard to argue that it is indeed in their possession legally (or maybe not). But come on. Are you going to sit here and tell me that those people are somehow worth thousands of times more than the next person? What if someone walked into your school and said "hey, I'm worth more than every single teacher in here combined". Would you nod your head and agree? Did they work harder than the guy who is working 60 hours a week in multiple jobs so that their children can maybe have some resemblance of a fair start that they never had? Are they more intelligent than the engineers who make things that, as far as most of the population is concerned, is done through magic?
Pure capitalism isn't fair. If it weren't for regulation we could all end up being slaves for what some people care. It's the people at the top who set the rules, who set their own wages and everyone else's.
Sorry if this is a bit of a depressing/liberal blog, but the sheer fact that 40% of people believe that, and that one of them happens to be a friend of mine was too annoying to ignore. Hell, I didn't even touch on "job creationism" and how people still put their faith in the same people who are outsourcing jobs or creating awful dead end minimum wage jobs.
I didn't highlight anything cause this whole blog is wtf. I still have no idea what his friend's opinion is, just shit the OP hates and I assume some of it is his friend's opinion? I guess? Maybe? And how exactly did your friend describe it? Because frequent use of words like "The fact that people voting for Romney" implies not your friend's personal view but just a widely held belief. I really wanted to read about the personal problems you guys have and his unique views that you disagree with that might make some sense, not just bashing "people who vote for Romney" with sensationalist strawmans and broad generalizations. The blog wasn't titled "Why I'm not voting for Romney" after all.
. 
