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What Stylebook Should Bloggers Use?

If you ever want to see writers argue loudly (and who doesn’t?), ask them which writing stylebook is the best. The opinions will be varied, the disagreements will be vocal, and the slap fights will be, well, slappy.

Nothing gets the ire of a writer up higher than someone slamming on their beloved style guide. A stylebook is really just a preference guide for how you want people to punctuate, and spell and capitalize certain words.

Bloggers often get caught in the cross-fire, because we don’t know which stylebook we should use. This is a question I’m often asked, and I always say the same thing:

Bloggers should use the Associated Press Stylebook

I like the Associated Press Stylebook (affiliate link) because it’s a book for journalists by journalists. And since bloggers are really citizen journalists, we might as well use the book the journalists use. Although it was really written for writers who work for the Associated Press, it has been adopted by every journalist except for the New York Times.

While there are no major differences between most of the stylebooks, except on some small ticky-tack stuff, like whether you should use the Oxford comma or whether or not to hyphenate certain words.

I realize there are many style guides you can choose from: MLA (Modern Language Association for English), Turabian (history), and APA (American Psychological Association; social sciences) for the academic world. The Chicago Manual of Style for book publishers, Strunk and White’s Element of Style for general writing, and The Bluebook for lawyers.

While there is the Columbia Guide to Online Style (COS), I prefer the AP Stylebook. The COS is used for citing online sources, and is a style guide for “creating documents electronically for submission for print or electronic publication,” but from what I can see, it’s used more for academic purposes, rather than the real world.

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Why You Should Put One Space After a Period, not Two

I raised a bit of a Twitter ruckus this morning, when I posted the following tweet:

# Attention Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: Here in the 21st century, we put one space after a period, not 2. That’s a typewriter thing.

It was just a random thought. Nothing sparked it, nothing set it off. I just like to post little pithy commenth every tho often.

I started getting replies from people I had never met, so I ran over to Twitterfallto see what was going on. Apparently, my little off-the-cuff random comment was sparking some serious conversation in Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts, and even England and Australia.

If you're not using one of these, you only need one space after a period.

Oopsie. People really like their two spaces after a period. That’s fine. It’s not wrong to do it, it’s just not necessary.

The rule came from our old typing classes, where we were told to use two spaces after a period. Younger people (i.e. punks and whippersnappers who never had to use a real typewriter) learned the two space rule from people who. . . learned to type on typewriters. (I learned from Mr. Carey, Typing 1 teacher, Muncie Central H.S., in 1983.)

According to Wikipedia, this double-spacing is sometimes called English spacing, although since the mid-1990s, it’s been called French spacing. (Insert your own joke about the French, cheese, and surrendering here.)

The reason for the two spaces is because typewriters use a fixed width font. That is, all letters were the same fixed width. The letters ‘i’ and ‘l’ take up the same space as the letter ‘m.’ To set the sentences apart from each other and make them easier to read, we used two spaces. This practice actually hearkens back to the typesetting days, when typesetters had to hand place each character and punctuation mark. They just stuck in a double space and the habit carried forward.

But unless you use Courier on your computer, today’s software programs use a variable width font like Arial and Times New Roman, which means the letter ‘i’ and ‘l’ take up a minimum amount of space, while the ‘m’ uses more. In fact, an ‘l’ is almost one-third the size of an ‘m.’ Take a look:

m
lll

In addition to this, the computer jams the period in tight against the last letter in a sentence, which creates a little extra space on the other side. If you could measure it, it would be microns of a difference, but the space looks bigger because of how the period is placed against that last letter.

The world is ignoring that second space

If you create websites, you’ll find that html will ignore any space after the first space. (And I know, I know, there’s a whole other controversy about whether it’s website, web site, or even Web site. That’s for a different post.)

Plus, there are some cases, like using Twitter or other micro-blogging services, when every character counts, you don’t want to waste a character on an extra space.

The net result of this variable width is that sentences are easier to read, which means the extra space is not necessary. Again, not wrong, just not necessary. (Okay, maybe a little wrong.)

This issue is not without its passionate controversy.

There were plenty of Twitterers who said I could have their extra space when I pried it from their cold, dead fingers. They learned to type on a typewriter, and are trying to break 30 – 40+ years of habit (it took me two weeks to quit doing it, and I had only been typing for 15 years at the time).

On the other hand, Luke Maciak at Terminally Incoherent said clients would count spaces in Word documents and send them back for revision if he didn’t use two spaces. Needless to say, he hated these clients.

So who’s wrong, and who’s right? Nobody, although I’m claiming moral superiority in this matter. I salute the traditionalists who want to stick with two spaces after a period. I love tradition and doing things old school (I still listen to radio theater). But I also see the need for ease of use, and eliminating extra keystrokes. And really, that’s what it’s all about.

(I’d be interested to see if someone has ever figure out what the saved spaces translates into for saved disk space.)

So what about you? Are you a single spacer or a double spacer? Why? If you’re a double, would you ever consider switching to single? Why not?

———-
A little more about it from the Chicago Manual of Style:

The view at CMOS is that there is no reason for two spaces after a period in published work. Some people, however—my colleagues included—prefer it, relegating this preference to their personal correspondence and notes. I’ve noticed in old American books printed in the few decades before and after the turn of the last century (ca. 1870–1930 at least) that there seemed to be a trend in publishing to use extra space (sometimes quite a bit of it) after periods. And many people were taught to use that extra space in typing class (I was). But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability—as your comment suggests, it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought—many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.

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What Tom Waits Can Teach You About Powerful Writing

Tom Waits isn’t just a musician, he’s a lifestyle choice. The growly-voiced singer-songwriter has created some of the most powerful, haunting music I’ve ever poured into my ears. Waits does it with simple, sad music, but more importantly, with a mastery of poetic language that would make Lord Byron pull his hair out with envy.

Especially the metaphor. Waits’ music is filled with metaphors, which gives it the emotional impact and depth you just don’t get with the Single Ladies and Poker Faces of the world. (Most of today’s music has all the emotional complexity of a high school prom, but Waits is an in-depth, all-night discussion about the meaning of life.)

A couple months ago, I wrote about why metaphors make for more powerful writing than similes. I said:

I don’t like similes. They’re weak. They’re the pencil-necked milksop of literary devices. They say things are similar, but not quite that item. Life is like a box of chocolates, but not really.

Take a look at (this) example: “Men’s words are bullets.” That’s a powerful phrase. It doesn’t say they’re like bullets, that they remind people of bullets, or “words can hurt people sort of like bullets can hurt people.” That’s just smarmy, wishy-washy pap.

“Men’s words are bullets,” on the other hand, makes you feel the the emotional damage that can be done by words, feeling the piercing, crashing power of a bullet fired from a large gun.

I’ve been listening to Waits’ Nighthawks at the Diner album a lot lately. It’s my favorite Waits album, and carries my favorite Waits song, Putnam County.

Any writer who wants to learn about the power and grip of language should give this a listen, and pay careful attention to Waits’ use of language. A quick check showed only one simile in the entire piece, and the rest were metaphors.

If you want to master writing and create language that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you to pay attention, study these lyrics, listen to the song, and see if you can introduce this style into your own writing.

Putnam County, Tom Waits

I guess things were always kinda quiet around Putnam County
Kinda shy and sleepy as it clung to the skirts of the 2-lane
That was stretched out just like an asphalt dance floor
Where all the old-timers in bib jeans and store bought boots
Were hunkerin’ down in the dirt
To lie about their lives and the places that they’d been

And they’d suck on Coca Colas, yeah, and be spittin’ Day’s Work
Until the moon was a stray dog on the ridge and
And the taverns would be swollen until the naked eye of 2 a.m.
And the Stratocasters slung over the Burgermeister beer guts

And swizzle stick legs jackknifed over naugahyde stools
And the witch hazel spread out over the linoleum floors
And pedal pushers stretched out over a midriff bulge
And the coiffed brunette curls over Maybelline eyes
Wearing Prince Matchabelli*, or something
Estee Lauder, smells so sweet

And I elbowed up at the counter with mixed feelings over mixed drinks
As Bubba and the Roadmasters moaned in pool hall concentration
And knit their brows to cover the entire Hank Williams songbook
Whether you like it or not

And the old National register was singin’ to the tune of $57.57
And then it’s last call, one more game of eightball
Berniece’d be puttin’ the chairs on the tables
And someone come in and say, ‘Hey man, anyone got any jumper cables?’
‘Is that a 6 or a 12 volt, man? I don’t know…’

Yeah, and all the studs in town would toss ’em down
And claim to fame as they stomped their feet
Yeah, boastin’ about bein’ able to get more ass than a toilet seat

And the GMCs) and the Straight-8 Fords were coughin’ and wheezin’
And they percolated) as they tossed the gravel underneath the fenders
To weave home a wet slick anaconda of a 2-lane

With tire irons and crowbars a-rattlin’
With a tool box and a pony saddle
You’re grindin’ gears and you’re shiftin’ into first
Yeah, and that goddam Tranny’s just gettin’ worse, man

With the melody of see-ya-laters and screwdrivers on carburetors
Talkin’ shop about money to loan
And Palominos and strawberry roans

See ya tomorrow, hello to the Missus!
With money to borrow and goodnight kisses
As the radio spit out Charlie Rich, man,
and he sure can sing that son of a bitch

And you weave home, yeah, weavin’ home
Leavin’ the little joint winkin’ in the dark warm narcotic American night
Beneath a pin cushion sky
And it’s home to toast and honey, gotta start up the Ford, man

Yeah, and your lunch money’s right over there on the drainin’ board
And the toilet’s runnin’! Christ, shake the handle!
And the telephone’s ringin’, it’s Mrs. Randall
And where the hell are my goddamn sandals?
What you mean, the dog chewed up my left foot?

With the porcelain poodles and the glass swans
Staring down from the knickknack shelf
And the parent permission slips for the kids’ field trips
Yeah, and a pair of Muckalucks) scraping across the shag carpet

And the impending squint of first light
And it lurked behind a weepin’ marquee in downtown Putnam
Yeah, and it’d be pullin’ up any minute now
Just like a bastard amber Velveta yellow cab on a rainy corner
And be blowin’ its horn in every window in town

(Here’s a YouTube video of a different version of Putnam Conty than the one you’ll hear on Nighthawks at the Diner, but the lyrics are the same. Listen to it and read the lyrics again. You’ll get a sense of what Waits can do with language, and the power it can have to move people.

* Update: I have to thank Allison (see the comments below) for the correction on Prince Matchabelli. I originally had Prince Machiavelli in the lyrics, which I got from the original lyrics source, but apparently Matchabelli is an old dimestore makeup. I had always heard the name, but never paid much attention to it. And in the song, I always thought Waits was purposely butchering “Machiavelli,” (not to be confused with the Machiavelli (mock-ee-uh-velli) who wrote “The Prince”).

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Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

“I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

It’s the same for writing: if you want to improve your writing you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

What does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

How can you improve you writing?

When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

  • Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
  • Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
  • How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

To improve your writing doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve your writing. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

Dammit!

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9 Books That Will Improve Your Writing

Demian Farnworth over at CopyBlogger came up with a list of the 10 Books That Will Transform Your Writing. Ten books, that if you read them, will help improve your writing just by reading some examples of what is good, and then modeling them

A few of Farnworth’s 10 transforming books:

  • King James Bible
  • Barbarians at the Gate – Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
  • Complete Odes and Epodes of Horace
  • Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

While I’ve only read a couple of Farnworth’s recommendations, I have a few recommendations of my own. These are my own favorite books and the ones I read more than once just to get an idea of how I want my writing to look.

    1. On Writing – Stephen King. I’m not a big fan of writing books and try to avoid them whenever possible. But more than a few writing friends recommended this one. Stephen King talks more about the desires and itch to write, and how he pursued his love of writing, even when he was first starting out. His story is inspiring and makes believe I can be successful.
    2. Fool – Christopher Moore. Really, any Christopher Moore book will do. The guy is a comic genius and knows how to write humor that catches you off-guard and makes you laugh out loud. Moore writes off-the-wall, exaggerated characters who seem so natural in their setting, and their descriptions and his jokes seem so effortless. He doesn’t crowbar anything into his stories, they just flow.
    3. My Beautiful Idol – Pete Gall. Pete is a writer here in Indianapolis, and has such tight writing that, after I read the first chapter, I started working to tighten up my own writing. I typically don’t notice the quality of writing unless it leaps out at me, good or bad. I’m more carried away by the story. But Pete’s writing just grabbed my attention, and made me pay attention to the quality of the words.
    4. My Other Life – Paul Theroux. I read this novella in an issue of Granta, and became a fan of Theroux. I’m not a big fan of creative writing and the emotional angst anyone with an MFA feels compelled to flog, but Theroux is one of the few I actually enjoy. He’s got a mastery of the language that I wish I could reach.
    5. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut. Indianapolis’ son is a world-famous wordsmith whose mastery of the language shines through, even when he’s writing some of the weirdest stuff. While most of his novels are fairly weird, Breakfast of Champions turns the Weirdness amp up to 11 . But even in this opus of oddity, the brilliance of his writing is obvious.
    6. Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman. The Romantic poet sure knew how to turn a phrase. He and a few other of the Romantic poets are great inspiration when you want to capture the flavor of language, and tap into its rhythm and energy, read someone like Whitman, Burns, or Lord Byron to get the creative juices flowing.
    7. Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain. I worked in a restaurant for a few months when I first moved here to Indianapolis, and while I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen, I can tell you it’s hot, sweaty, unpleasant work. But Bourdain is able to make it sound glamorous, cool, and even enjoyable. If he can make kitchen grunt work sound fun and exciting, what can you do with your blog with his influence?
    8. The Naming of the Dead – Ian Rankin. You can actually pick any Inspector Rebus novel by this Scottish writer to get a look at what good dialog looks (he’s written 20 Rebus novels alone; he’s written 12 others) like. The dialog is tight, believable, and sounds like real people. I figure Rankin knows what he’s doing, because according to literary legend, Rankin lives on the same street as J.K. Rowling, who lives in a damn castle. If he made enough money to be her neighbor, he must be doing something right.
    9. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson. The man’s crazed drug and alcohol addictions notwithstanding, HST was a brilliant writer in his early days. His writing suffered as he slipped deeper into his addictions, but his earlier stuff was brilliant. It packed all the punch of a Chuck Norris movie, and was as tight as a drum. That’s because Hunter would write a series of ledes (newspaper talk for “lead,” or the opening sentence of a story), and string them together. Rather than having only one punchy attention-grabbing sentence, he had a dozen of them. If you want to add power to your writing, get the early Thompson works. (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is another recommended read.)

Other writers I could have included, but didn’t — for no particular reason include — Douglas Adams, Dave Barry, Dick Francis. These writers are also great, and worth studying. I like them for their humor (Adams and Barry), and their ability to tell a good story (Adams, Francis). Plus, they all have a large body of work to draw from. Check any and all of these writers out and start learning from them as a fun way to improve your writing.

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Want to Make Your Writing More Vivid? Use Metaphors

If you want to add some life to your writing, to give it breath and a heartbeat, use metaphors. They’re the lifeblood of any vibrant, vivid writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.

I’ve been using metaphors in my writing with great success over the last several years. It marks a significant improvement in the quality of my writing, and I’ve garnered more and better opportunities. Whether there’s a connection between the two, I don’t know.

I’m a big fan of metaphors, and I like them better than similes. From the Greek, metaphora means to transfer or to carry over. It basically carries a comparison from one idea or item to another.

There is one difference between metaphors and similes: similes use the words like or as in them, metaphors do not.

Similes

  • Life is like a box of chocolates. (Forrest Gump
  • There was a great shout like the roaring of an airplane.
  • Similes are like metaphors, but only weaker.

Metaphors

I don’t like similes. They’re weak. They’re the pencil-necked milksop of literary devices. They say things are similar, but not quite that item. Life is like a box of chocolates, but not really.

Take a look at the last metaphor example: “Men’s words are bullets.” That’s a powerful phrase. It doesn’t say they’re like bullets, that they remind people of bullets, or “words can hurt people sort of like bullets can hurt people.” That’s just smarmy, wishy-washy pap.

“Men’s words are bullets,” on the other hand, makes you feel the the emotional damage that can be done by words, feeling the piercing, crashing power of a bullet fired from a large gun.

If you want to make your writing more powerful and add more life to your words, sprinkle some metaphors into your articles and watch what they’ll do for you.