vileru Wrote:Javizy Wrote:Asriel Wrote:Well that's just, like, you're opinion, man.
I was just trying to say that Darvish Yu probably isn't a good source for written Japanese, like I'm sure Paris Hilton isn't for English learners.
What about the other blog I quoted? It's written by Uehara Hiromi, who is an internationally famous jazz pianist and graduated from the acclaimed Berklee College of Music. I seriously doubt that the language abilities of a prominent jazz musician educated at one of the top music schools would be comparable to Paris Hilton.
Who then should I look to for guidance on how to write engaging, yet mature blogs and emails? How about Kawakami Hiromi (川上弘美), winner of the 1996 Akutagawa Prize (i.e. the most prestigious literary prize in Japan). What?! Are you serious?! Her blog uses the same formatting style as well! Oh well, I suppose I must be left with the disappointing conclusion that even prize winning novelists write like Paris Hilton. I'm sorry for the sarcasm, but I haven't yet been convinced that this style of formatting blogs and emails is just for 14 year-old girls.
This isn't specific to your reply, I just want to address a fallicy that I often hear and find rather harmful: prestige is not a correlation, let alone a causation, of intellect. The Akutagawa Prize is very prestigious, yes, but having personally read nearly every novel that has won the award I can tell you that the vast majority of the writers do not express anything all that enlightening or intelligent. 蛇を踏む contains simplistic ideas, vocabulary, and I can't remember anything in that novel that would indicate the writer is above average in complexity of ideas or thought from any humanities specialist.
And while Berklee College of Music is a wonderful university, I don't exactly see a relationship between musicianship and linguistic abilities. I've met many absolutely brilliant musicians in my life, and while they might be able to draw poetry from an instrument, their tongues were rarely so eloquent.
In addition, all one has to do is wander around the campus of any "world's top university" and they will hear plenty of students talking like airheaded teenagers. If you heard these people in any other environment you might assume they were still in high school with a 2.0 gpa.
Anyways, back on topic! When I first responded to this thread I somehow combined it with the thread on "speaking eloquently in Japanese" in my mind, thus why I originally said it makes one sould like a teenage girl, if one is using professional writing/eloquency as the standard of comparison.
Yes, such formatting is commonplace on the Internet, mostly for the reasons I explained previously: of it having a wider apeal to more readers due to being less threatening, and being easier on the eyes. And for writing online for general things like that, that's perfectly fine.
However, it depends entirely upon the content the author is expressing. Blogs and emails are for the most part casual material and entertainment (the general public is the audience), which in general are going to express simplistic ideas, and benefit from the pros of this style of writing. For more professional, complex writing though, even if it takes place on the internet, more formatted, cohesive paragraphs are the preferred and beneficial style. For example, while an author's personal blog might be formatted that way, a literary blog that is designed not for the general public, but for literary professors and experts in the field, will be written more professionally. If one is typing complex paragraphs about singular ideas, breaking it up disrupts the flow of the arguments, and creates less organized writing, just like if writing a thesis paper or any standard academic writing would never employ that technique.
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