The Declarative Voice and Blogging

A friend and I recently had a con­ver­sa­tion about blog­ging. We talked about how when you’re blog­ging and you have some­thing you want to say, you have to write in the declar­a­tive or else the text comes off wishy-washy. He knew it was right, but it was his biggest hur­dle to get over.

I agree that it’s strange to sound so author­i­ta­tive… I mean, I hardly ever speak like this in vocal con­ver­sa­tion, unless what I’m say­ing is irrefutable, like “My daugh­ter is awe­some.” or “Fire is hot.”

At first, it did feel weird to write these arti­cles where I’m stat­ing my opin­ion as if it’s empir­i­cal truth. I don’t say that it’s absolute truth, but I also don’t start every sen­tence with “In my opin­ion”. That phrase is one of many that acti­vates a hid­den voice in a reader’s head that says, “Stop read­ing this.”

Writ­ing for a blog is just like writ­ing an edi­to­r­ial for a newspaper.

Like edi­to­ri­als, it comes down to lean­ing on the reader to under­stand that the blog’s author is just another per­son who feels com­pelled to write. Express your opin­ions, trust your readers–they can han­dle it.