Hiya! Happy March! How are you doing? I have a bit of a sniffly nose, for some reason, but I am still doing pretty well. This is my 30th post! Today I want to talk about something that I have struggled with ever since I started blogging: blogging style.

By that, I mainly mean my blogging voice/how I write my blog. Have you ever had a hard time wondering how a blog is supposed to be written? Well today, I’m going to take a deeper look at what I have learned.

Sometimes, talking about things allows me to understand my thoughts better, so writing this post out will hopefully help all of us. Please enjoy some adorable pictures of  Treasured Script’s mascot: Iris.

There are two extremes I have found when looking at blogs.

The first extreme:

When I first started blogging I did not know what this meant:

<3

What was a less than symbol doing next to the number three? Well, it was being used quite a lot, so I came to the conclusion it was probably not a typo (hehe). I soon looked it up on the internet and found out it was a heart! It is just an “emoticon,” but things got more confusing for me from there.

That was just an example of a repeated journey I had through the years, learning how the internet worked. Internet slang especially was everywhere.

I literally made this list on my phone:

Some shortenings for words:

TTYL: talk to you later

TT: too true

TTFN: ta ta for now

LOL: laugh out loud

BTW: by the way

WBS: write back soon

JK: just kidding

IKR: I know right

IK: I know

NP: no problem

IDK: I don’t know

ROTFL: roll on the floor laughing

I still can fall into using “LOL” a bit too much for my liking, but at least it is one of the more widely known internet slangs.

As a young blogger, my conclusion was that this was the cool way to write on the internet, thus I literally began looking for situations I could use internet slang in my writing.

Seriously.

There is nothing inherently wrong with internet slang, but I have found that using it often is not the direction I want to go with my blog writing. Why? Well, there are people out there who are just like I was, not knowing what slang like this meant, which means by using it I’d be catering to a very specific group of people. That group is probably mainly teens versed in these kinds of non-grammatical slangs through things like texting. That is another thing I do not want. I do not want my blogging to look like a quick thoughtless text message. I want it to be taken seriously.

Emoticons and emojis are a different thing than slang as long as they are not used to replace words. If a reader does not understand them (though they are easier to understand than slang) it is not the end of the world. I am still trying not to use them excessively (especially in posts) because they can still appear unprofessional.  I do use the laughing face a lot: XD. Hehe.

That’s where we come to the other extreme:

I am not a professional, but I do want my posts to come across professional enough that they are taken seriously.  This is the better way to lean because it does not exclude anyone. Sometimes I do not, on the other hand, want to be so professional acting that I become distanced from my readers.

Again there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a “super professional.” This works fantastic for businesses, especially. It is just not the way I want to write. I want to be there for and talk with (you) my readers because it engages you more. I do not want to be a mysterious blogger.

Finally, being an internet slang blogger has its purposes, especially if the author is aiming towards a specific group of people. Doing it this way often times ensures a close relationship with readers that some “super professionals” do not have. “Super professionals”  have purposes too. They are there to inform and be taken seriously, but nothing much more.

About that question in the beginning:

Really, there is no way a blog is supposed to be written.

Different types of writing will be effective in different ways. Make sure you pick the writing that is effective for your standards.

There might be other extremes than the ones I noted, but those are what stood out to me. In conclusion, I have decided to try and aim for something that receives the benefits of both those extremes. Though it can be a bit tough, I want to be in the middle, a kind of balanced blogger. Depending even on what I am discussing in the post, I’ll lean one way or the other, but I like to stay generally in the middle. That is the blogging style I choose. Hopefully, it could be called something like the: friendly blogger. Friendly blogs are my favorite types of blogs to read because I understand and feel engaged with them.

What do you think? What is your favorite kind of blogging style? What way do you lean? If you enjoyed the post, I’d appreciate if you hit that like button! Bye, for now, everyone!

P.S. How did you like the photos of Iris? Isn’t she cute?!