So You Want to Blog?

Iowahawk has pointers and they are not bad and they certainly are hilatiously funny.

Here is Iowahawk on pith:

Blog Dimension 1: Pith. In today’s go-go-go world, readers need their opinions now. They need them fast and to the point. Remember rule number one: do everything within your power to increase the economical verbal tersity of your posts, because what is increasingly certain in this increasingly time-strapped blog market in which we blog in, it is the growing situation in which John and/or Mary Q. BlogPublic will not stand for some endlessly meandering blog entry, all ‘gussied up’ in some flowery punctuation, blithering and yammering on and on and on and on, never – or frequently seldom ever – getting to the crux of the point that the blogger (or group blog, or web diarist, or whoever) is arguing in favor, or possibly against, of, which frequenty creates a frustrating situation for those many, many readers who have increasingly decreased time to keep wading through a seemingly endless -- and often redundant -- yammering and blithering post by a blogger that keeps repeating himself and/or herself without her or him or them ever finally getting to the original objective point of their article, or post.

To demonstrate the power of pith, let’s look at the example of top blogger Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. When he links to a story with his famous "HEH," readers instantly recognize that this is shorthand for "here is a thing that somebody emailed me that sounded mildly amusing. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to resume ogling the hot coeds walking by my office window."

This is exactly the kind of no-nonsense, to-the-point pith that readers value, and has helped establish Instapundit as America's most feared blog brand. As a new blogger, you too can leverage the power of pith, but don't violate existing pith trademarks without proper permission. All too often I've seen a casual unlicensed 'HEH' by a rookie blogger backfire, their lives shattered as they are hounded into bankrupcy and alcoholic ruin by Reynolds and his relentless legal copyright thugs.

The lesson here is clear: as a good blog citizen, you should respect others' pithword rights, or at least create a cheap knockoff. The good news is that I've done an exhaustive records search, and discovered that the following somewhat similar pithy link words were all untrademarked: HO, HAHAHA, HEE HEE, SNORK, SNORNK, BWAHHHA, CHAH, HUH?, WTF?, GAH, PHEH, OMG, and YIRF. The bad news is that now I've copyrighted all of them and their variants, and have put Glenn Reynolds on retainer.

Source: Iowahawk -
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Bill O'Reilly would be proud!