All PostsWhen a post at The Comics Journal appeared in my feed reader promising “R.C. Harvey on R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis“ I was excited to see what he had to say, especially since (as I mentioned in my review) I think the particular text-image interaction in the book would be of interest to Harvey.
Unfortunately, the post itself (I can’t call it a review) is primarily Harvey quoting other reviews and articles about the book and/or Crumb. Harvey himself offers less of his own writing than quotes (and quotes within quotes and what I think are quotes quoted from other pieces). In the end, I have no idea what Harvey really thought about the book.
And, in the fine tradition of critiquing the TCJ site’s working: someone over there should teach Harvey some common blogging skills such as linking to articles you reference (a quick google search brings up the first review Harvey mentions, it’s not too hard) and using the all important “blockquote” tag to differentiate quoted materials (italics are hard to read online, particularly for a whole paragraph at a time). Maybe they need a TCJ blog boot camp.
I doubt Harvey will actually see this (though, you never know), but if he does: I’d love to hear what he thinks about Crumb’s use visual-verbal blending.
Edit after hitting post: On the other hand his piece on the Handley case is well worth reading.
I’ve wondered this: What basics should a writer know before going online? “Elements of Style” only not style, code.
Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m gonna try a formatted list. Hopefully it’ll screw up the comment and make me look like I don’t know what I’m talking about:
Basic HTML, for linking, blockquoting, other formatting
Linking strategies, trackbacks, comments, the ecology of the “Social Web”
Search Engine Optimization, how spiders work, what they want– with tips to tags, categories, Meta Description fields
I think that last one’s the least important, as online comics writing is an ouroboros. Bonus points for self-hosted domains, WordPress, PHP, keeping your MySQL from overloading, etc. Tweets.
What am I missing?
Agh! The list failed. Momma was right about me
That may have been WordPress stripping out html, Bill. Not necessarily your fault.
I think your list is pretty good. Particularly those first two. For those writing for a group blog, you don’t need as much attention paid to the last item as the blog’s main editor should be paying attention to that stuff.