BloggingOn 6.2 – Aldon Hynes said…

“Does the blogosphere have its own writing aesthetic? I think, as illustrated by the drawing on the board about different communities within the blogosphere, it may be useful to think about writing aesthetics within the blogosphere on a more community by community basis. Political blogs are going to have a very different writing aesthetic than teen angst blogs.”

True dat. But so what? Which is to say… what’s observation without careless generalization? I think we can say something about the blogosphere as a whole without having to get mired in specificity.

Let’s throw out some words that might just be worth putting up on the ol’ dry-erase board, shall we? The following tropes* seem to exist somewhat ubiquitously in blogland:

Blogs are (often)…

Informal
Humorous
Conversational
Anecdotal
Comprehensive(?)

It seems like any and all of those links are interchangeable with the others (except, perhaps, "comprehensive", but I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for anyway). Regardless of the "community" (or perhaps genre is a better word), at least one of these character traits seems to operate. I vote for "informal" and "conversational" as the alpha-trope blog traits.

*I happened upon this while fleshing out a useful definition of tropes (thanks wikipedia!). It is fabulously entertaining.