Writing on the Internet

Many years ago, I read an anecdote somewhere about an American working in an Asian country who was extremely frustrated with communication challenges. One day, he felt he was finally getting somewhere and said "I think we are thinking along parallel lines."

To his surprise and pleasure, his Asian colleague agreed with that assessment. When it again became apparent at a later date that they remained at an impasse, he referenced that conversation and his colleague said "Parallel lines never meet."

The internet is probably the most extremely diverse community that has ever existed and this extreme diversity compounds a lot of problems.

Learning to write well for things posted to the internet has proven to be more challenging than I expected. I think the extreme diversity of the audience is a factor there.

It makes it very challenging for saying something clearly in a way that will not be very wildly misinterpreted by a great many people and to add to the fun the same thing can be very wildly misinterpreted in a wide variety of ways.

I'm an American from the Deep South and a former military wife. People not familiar with Southern culture or not familiar with military culture seem to wildly misinterpret my meaning at times and it's taken me a lot of years to parse what some of the worst pitfalls are even for speaking effectively to other Americans.

It can help to clearly define your topic and audience not only in your own mind but also somewhere in your article or on your website. This will not completely prevent bizarre misinterpretations but it should mitigate the worst of it.

It can also help to make sure to supply context. This is part of why this website exists and has a couple of pages about me and my websites.

I am trying to help people understand who I am and what I do so they can better understand my writing and my work if they so desire. It's not really about me. It's just to help people better figure out the meaning of my words on the internet.

Pivoting a Website

The website Aberdeen Art and Music began as an effort to consolidate three older websites into a single website for purposes of trying to create a local walking tour as a tourist asset for this small town. It later took on a new purpose and I was tasked with updating the site to preserve and enhance the existing purpose while making room for new functions. The older websites were static sites that each corresponded to a printed brochure. The brochures and corresponding original websites were logically categorized by type of art: Murals, Critters and Urban Art (mostly sculpture). But much of this art can be found in close proximity in the downtown area, so I wanted to consolidate that information and enhance it to serve as an economic development tool for this small town. The intent was to support a walking tour via smartphone and begin phasing out the printed brochures while still supporting the existing brochures that were still out there and had the old URLs on them. In s

Local News and Information Online

I recentely read an online article with local news. Nowhere in the article does it actually name the state and the name of the publication is generic enough it doesn't give clues as to the location. I poked around the site and found a county name somewhere, maybe in the same article, maybe in a different article. I googled the city name and the spelling is unusual such that it might be a unique city name though there are definitely other cities with names that sound the same. If this article were printed in a physical newspaper bought locally, using just the city name would be fine. You would know from context exactly which city was intended. But when an article is posted online, people can potentially trip across it from anywhere in the world. You are no longer talking to just locals and even if the city name is unique, not everyone will automatically know that. Don't assume your audience will go digging for more info like I did to try to figure out exactly where

My Work

In the movie The Pickup Artist , Molly Ringwald's character utters my all-time favorite movie line: I'm too truthful to be good. I have apparently always been socially insightful. I was probably the bratty child yelling "The emperor has no clothes" and getting away with being rude, crude and socially unacceptable because I was cute as a button. When you are four, people laugh uncomfortably and don't explain to you why they are laughing. Being four, you stupidly think you are a talented comedian and then you spend your twenties and thirties baffled as to why everyone routinely gives you the death glare and wants your head on a pike instead of appreciating your witty insight and sense of humor. Me being me, I didn't stop being honest. I just tried to find ways to express myself that were less likely to have people wanting my head on a pike. This is a large part of why I blog. I still find social stuff very interesting, I see a need in the world for hig

Doreen Michele

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