my blog about wedding photography

complete amateur here so please don't try to shoot me down.

first post kind of sucks, but hopefully as i go along, i'll get more technical. my overall goal is to help newcomers.

i'm not the best of writers, so if it sucks it sucks and i'll stop. if anyone wants some advice or topics they want me to touch, shoot me an email.

blog here: http://www.richardtyi.​com/blog/?p=507

Hi,

For me, any blog that doesn't punctuate properly (i.e. NO capital letters) will lose readers - many people are put off by that. Call me pedantic if you like, but that's the way I see it.

Sorry.

David

beegeeboy wrote in post #12222754
Hi,

For me, any blog that doesn't punctuate properly (i.e. NO capital letters) will lose readers - many people are put off by that. Call me pedantic if you like, but that's the way I see it.

Sorry.

David

I gotta agree with David. Why would a reader take you seriously if you don't take your writing seriously?

jcolman wrote in post #12222782
I gotta agree with David.

Thanks! That's the first time ever anyone has!

David

jcolman wrote in post #12222782
I gotta agree with David. Why would a reader take you seriously if you don't take your writing seriously?

+ 1

"Choosing to not use capital letters isn't quite the same as showing poor grammar. The vast majority of people will not care about this."

I'm not so sure I agree with this; you wouldn't choose to put photographs on your blog that weren't very good as that says something about you. Why should text be any different? Surely you can argue that if you can't show enough care to write correctly then how do I know you'll be bothered to take my wedding shoot seriously?

David

bnlearle wrote in post #12223144
Choosing to not use capital letters isn't quite the same as showing poor grammar. The vast majority of people will not care about this.

The thing is it does have an effect on the readability of the blog. Numerous studies have shown that not capitalising has the effect of making the text harder to read. A blog, which of course is meant to be read having text which is less readable be it from too narrow a line height, bad contrasting colours, overly fancy font or whatever it may be does have an impact. How many magazines or newspapers adopt the approach of dropping capitals altogether?

The whole purpose of a blog is for it to be read so why make it more difficult than it should be. The equivalent visually would be giving someone a pair of sun glasses to wear and then look at the website to view photographs.

A first for me too I think, agreeing with Bobby on a non-photography matter.
However, for me the alarm bells started with;

"complete amateur here so please don't try to shoot me down."

People asking for critique and then asking me not to be critical gets to me a bit.

followed by

"i'm not the best of writers, so if it sucks it sucks and i'll stop. if anyone wants some advice or topics they want me to touch, shoot me an email."

If you knew you were no good at photography, you wouldn't offer to do it for people, however you are sure you're not good at writing (I'm sorry but you are correct on this one) yet you want to write a blog which you hope will help lots of people.

I'm really sorry, but there are many great sources of help and advice, you need to offer something different and I don't suggest bad grammar and typo's is the kind of different that will work. Unfortunately the lack of capitalisation is only a small part of your problems.

I have a problem with my blog writing, all my 'normal' writing is very technical and factual. In person I'm a fun bloke, I like to laugh more than anything else and this does come through in my photography. However I haven't yet found my 'voice' for my blog or website that reflects me.

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #12223314
The thing is it does have an effect on the readability of the blog. Numerous studies have shown that not capitalising has the effect of making the text harder to read. A blog, which of course is meant to be read having text which is less readable be it from too narrow a line height, bad contrasting colours, overly fancy font or whatever it may be does have an impact. How many magazines or newspapers adopt the approach of dropping capitals altogether?

The whole purpose of a blog is for it to be read so why make it more difficult than it should be. The equivalent visually would be giving someone a pair of sun glasses to wear and then look at the website to view photographs.

Why is all lower case wrong but all caps is right? I clicked your site and the first thing I saw was your heading in all caps. I disagree on the whole purpose of a blog is reading, at least for photographers. The purpose of our blog is create a brand or style of photography that makes us noticed. We need to get people to come back to our blog and make our blog stand out from the other millions out there. Does all lowercase do that? Debatable, but at least he tried something to make his unique.

beegeeboy wrote in post #12222754
Hi,

For me, any blog that doesn't punctuate properly (i.e. NO capital letters) will lose readers - many people are put off by that. Call me pedantic if you like, but that's the way I see it.

Sorry.

David

I tried to look at your site and your signature goes to a page that does not exist.

bnlearle wrote in post #12223745
There are studies that show tons of things. And I don't even disagree with you about the capitalization thing. I just don't think it matters on the priority scale.

I fundamentally agree IF the content is very well written. That said, capitalization is pretty easy so why handicap yourself? When my son was 16 and looking for his first summer job, he had extremely long hair. He wanted to keep it and insisted that he knew other friends who found employment in spite of their long hair. Maybe, but why handicap yourself? Someone might hire you, but many won't even consider you owing to nothing but the hair.

Same thing here. Some will stay because they don't care about capitalization and maybe even grammar; some will pass you by simply because they can't get past it. Why lose those readers when you don't have to? BTW, my son did NOT land a job that summer (and has both shorter hair and a job now).

CTP wrote in post #12226349
Why is all lower case wrong but all caps is right? I clicked your site and the first thing I saw was your heading in all caps.

Using all capitals would be a major issue when used in a main body of text. I.e. the focus of someone's attention. Studies again have shown that this also make reading more difficult for long passages.

Note on my site it was for the title and not the main content. Aside from that the purpose of my website is selling a professional service with the focus being on the photographs. An online brochure-ware site has a very different scope when it comes to how it is used to that of one which the primary focus is for it to be read.

I believe there are one or two threads on this site where I have ASKED for opinions on my site so maybe posting your views there would be more appropriate. (Not that I really care what you think at all to be honest).

The underlying remit for a blog is that it is read similarly to a newspaper article. Making it more difficult to read from the outset can lose readership. Whether you like it or not the findings from studies in this area are not up for debate. There will always be the odd exception to the rule but when was the last newspaper you saw written without any capital letters at all?

I would take your point on board about branding IF the OP's blog had shown any signs of it being evident at all. But really what branding is there on their blog? Nothing discernible at all. Black page, white text, standard font, no logo... in fact the most branding on the page comes from the advertisement (which I believe is a third party's ad).

So looking at things objectively given the content the OP has presented, in the manner presented stating that the way in which the blog was written was somewhat off putting in line with accepted research in to readability was perfectly reasonable.

wow a whole thread about the use of capitalization. what a waste. i'm out.

bnlearle wrote in post #12223144
The people who will are probably the people who point out when someone used "their" instead of "they're" or "me and her" instead of "her and I"...

"she and I"

craiglee wrote in post #12222616
my overall goal is to help newcomers.

From your blog: "so my point is you can learn numbers, you can’t learn photography."

So why are you blogging?

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #12227316
Using all capitals would be a major issue when used in a main body of text. I.e. the focus of someone's attention. Studies again have shown that this also make reading more difficult for long passages.

Note on my site it was for the title and not the main content. Aside from that the purpose of my website is selling a professional service with the focus being on the photographs. An online brochure-ware site has a very different scope when it comes to how it is used to that of one which the primary focus is for it to be read.

I believe there are one or two threads on this site where I have ASKED for opinions on my site so maybe posting your views there would be more appropriate. (Not that I really care what you think at all to be honest).

The underlying remit for a blog is that it is read similarly to a newspaper article. Making it more difficult to read from the outset can lose readership. Whether you like it or not the findings from studies in this area are not up for debate. There will always be the odd exception to the rule but when was the last newspaper you saw written without any capital letters at all?

I would take your point on board about branding IF the OP's blog had shown any signs of it being evident at all. But really what branding is there on their blog? Nothing discernible at all. Black page, white text, standard font, no logo... in fact the most branding on the page comes from the advertisement (which I believe is a third party's ad).

So looking at things objectively given the content the OP has presented, in the manner presented stating that the way in which the blog was written was somewhat off putting in line with accepted research in to readability was perfectly reasonable.

I think we are in complete agreement, just looking at different points at different times. I guess I am more in agreement with Bobby. The punctuation is important but the degree to which people here are taking here is just absurd.

If OPs blog doesnt make it, at this point it would really difficult to tell me it was solely on punctuation. If you are telling me it is a going to fail because of punctuation, I would ask why you are being the punctuation police when you clearly broke punctuation rules on your home page?

It just came across as you were giving some advice that you were not following and that aggravates me, especially when the OP needed help that was much more than just punctuation.