It’s easy to open a WordPress account and start typing away, but the writing challenge is to hold an audience’s attention. “If the Reader is lost, it’s usually because the writer hasn’t been careful enough,” William Zinsser states in his book On Writing Well. This thought is very reassuring for anyone who has read a poorly written blog and faulted themselves for not understanding. 

Full-time blogger, Sue Dunlevie, wrote a post outlining 16 Rules of successful blog writing. Some of the key rules she mentions are:

• Make sure readers can skim the text.
• The column and font size should help with readability.
• Use short paragraphs.
• Be mindful of the white space.
• Use photography.

Using her principles, I have compared and contrasted two interior design blogs that I frequent. The first blog, Young House Love (YHL), is a husband and wife team, John and Sherry, who renovate their house and share their process. The second blog is At Charlotte’s House. Charlotte is a mother of five who adds color and energy any way she can to her rental home. 

While reading Charlotte’s post titled Kids Desk Area and Homework Station, I found the post to be pleasant to read and Charlotte to be very relatable. She introduced her project with a splashy photo and then described it in two sentences. The project is then broken down into steps, each with a clear subhead, a large picture, and a short description of the process. By including phrases like “goodness knows,” her writing style is like talking to a friend. 

Additionally, Charlotte’s format is fairly simple, so the ads and distractions fade away. The post length was short and was summarized well. Overall it is a very skimmable blog post. However, decreasing the column width and increasing the font size would definitely improve readability. 

Jumping over to Young House Love, I read the post titled A Colorful Planked Wall Treatment for Our Son’s Room.  The photography was beautiful; the column width and font size were very readable. I also enjoyed the different link color to draw attention to specific text. Regardless of the excellent format, the article’s length and content was incredibly drawn out. Often the writer strayed from the topic, which made it impossible to follow. All of the hyperlinks and video ads within the body of the post were very distracting. These factors led me to feel very fatigued, and desperate for the post to end. I think the author, Zinsser, would consider the writing to be cluttered and would recommend it be cut by 50 percent.  

Using Sue Dunlevie’s Blog formatting and Zinsser’s writing guide, the ‘At Charlotte’s House’ blog post was very clear and concise. By following the blogging rules of skimmable text, length, good use of subheads, and photography, it was easier to connect with her story, and I wanted to stay longer on her site. 

On the other hand, the Young House Love blog post exceeded my attention span and made me want to leave. No matter how great the column width was and readable font size, the story did not flow.  Although YHL followed the blog guidelines, the writing could be decluttered.