I agree with her assessment. I, too can tell bloggers by the way they 'sound'. The human power of perception is quite amazing in all types of circumstances.
I know we only notice it in people with disabilities like blindness, where their other senses pick things up.
But this just goes to show, how intuitive we can really be if we put our minds to it!
But, really, this is true of writers in general. If you were given several sheets of paper with passages written by, say, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, et al, and you'd read these writers' works extensively, you would also recognize their voices without needing their names to tell you. (Sadly, it also works with bad writers. Back in my professorial days, I could recognize my students' distinctively bad prose just as easily, name or no name on the paper.)
If you routinely read several bloggers, then of course you've picked up their style -- their types of sentence construction, favorite words, idiosyncratic wit, etc. Don't you recognize the voices of your best friends on the phone without needing caller i.d. to tell you who it is?
I think it is true of writing in general. The point, however, is that many have not thought of blogging in those terms. When Glenn Reynolds went on vacation from InstaPundit, he had four excellent bloggers fill in for him. They did a great job. But it still wasn't the same without Glenn. Something hard to define was missing.
I agree with her assessment. I, too can tell bloggers by the way they 'sound'. The human power of perception is quite amazing in all types of circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI know we only notice it in people with disabilities like blindness, where their other senses pick things up.
But this just goes to show, how intuitive we can really be if we put our minds to it!
But, really, this is true of writers in general. If you were given several sheets of paper with passages written by, say, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, et al, and you'd read these writers' works extensively, you would also recognize their voices without needing their names to tell you. (Sadly, it also works with bad writers. Back in my professorial days, I could recognize my students' distinctively bad prose just as easily, name or no name on the paper.)
ReplyDeleteIf you routinely read several bloggers, then of course you've picked up their style -- their types of sentence construction, favorite words, idiosyncratic wit, etc. Don't you recognize the voices of your best friends on the phone without needing caller i.d. to tell you who it is?
I think it is true of writing in general. The point, however, is that many have not thought of blogging in those terms. When Glenn Reynolds went on vacation from InstaPundit, he had four excellent bloggers fill in for him. They did a great job. But it still wasn't the same without Glenn. Something hard to define was missing.
ReplyDelete