Yesterday, wordpress released version 3.2 which brought with it some welcome changes such as a cleaner dashboard menu and a new ‘twenty eleven‘ html 5 theme.
WordPress 3.2 (Gershwin)
As a long time user of wordpress, the most valuable addition for me in 3.2 (aka Gershwin), has been the ‘zen’ writing mode. This allows me to switch in to a full screen, distraction-free writing environment. It’s a thing of beauty and whilst this isn’t ‘new’ to me (i’d previously used a plugin to do the same thing), the fact it now comes bundled in with wordpress means i can use one less resource hogging plugin 🙂
Just Write.
Any change which speeds up the writing process or encourages me to write more, is welcomed. Even as i write these sentences in full screen zen mode, my words and sentences seem more naked and exposed… so that makes me read over them more and catch mistakes or think harder about how to word something. Maybe it’s because this full screen zen mode is a novelty feature, maybe it’s because literally all i can see on the screen is the text i’m after writing…
More important than ever before
Writing to me now is more important than ever before. It helps me to get things done, explain them to others and it also allows me to record and remember stuff in great detail. It’s security and insurance. Much like design, there’s good versions and bad versions but every bit of writing is unique. Bad versions frustrate the hell out of me… there’s nothing more frustrating than reading something which you start correcting in your head. Grammar nazi i am not, but if words or sentences, start not flowing proper then i get frustrated. Alan Sugar on the Apprentice is a guy that gets away with grammatical murder. ‘We wuz’, ‘you wus’…. he’d be hammered at school for talking like that, but he’s Alan Sugar so it goes unchallenged.
photo credit: 28 misguided souls (away)
I don’t know what his writing is like, but he can talk well so he’s an example of how (imo) we’ve come to accept imperfection in writing / grammar because his message is more important. Look at all of my i’s…. i deliberately leave them lowercase just because i feel like it. Does it disrupt your reading any? Well it doesn’t disrupt mine… the reason i leave them lowercase is in fact to speed up reading…
I find that capital I and lowercase l are too similar in digital format, so i decided a long time ago to scrap the capital I unless i was starting a sentence with it. Am i the only one that does that? I don’t know, but nobody has ever commented on it, whereas they have with grammatical errors or the odd misfortunate spelling error.
The bottom line is doesn’t matter how you write, so long as it all flows. It’s a bit like driving… you could break dozens of rules of the road by keeping your car flowing, but you’d keep other drivers happier plus you may be causing no danger at all… smarter to stick within rules? Your call, but i know that if someone stood over me corrected my i’s and analysing every sentence, i wouldn’t be long about easing up on these daily blog posts 🙂