So Miguel, when are you going to do your “Ask me anything?”
I can’t make him do an AMA but he is the winner of that poll.
There are enough cases going on out there that it should be possible to write a different case analysis everyday for the next ten years. I can’t handle it and I don’t think you can either.
One of the things that I despise is when quotes are taken out of context. The number of times I’ve read some media shill string four 3 word quotes together in order to make somebody look bad (or good) is in the tens of thousands. It is just wrong.
The liars seem to do this all the time. Listening to Bonta’s people say … The Second Amendment isn’t a “regulatory straightjacket”…
and leave of the blank check part of the clause is infuriating to me.
Since I’m now writing for the public, you all, I decided that I wasn’t going to provide out of context quotes. These leads to huge pull quotes. The quotes were getting so out of hand I wrote CSS to support my tendency to create such quotes.
It is very difficult when I’m writing to keep my articles short. I know that for “best engagement” blog postings should be in the 500 word range. My articles run 1500 to 3000 or more words.
The article I am writing about Rupp v. Bonta is about 7000 words long. I broke that into three different postings but each of those three are still long.
I’ve added B.L.U.F. to try and help and I’ve started adding “asides” to help break up that word wall, but they are still long.
I am also going to try and remember to take advantage of the “read more” feature so that the home page is less of a wall of text.
Anything else you want to say, please add it down below. Thank you to all our wonderful readers.
Each of you – Miguel, J.Kb, AWA, Hagar – has a distinctive writing style. I would not necessarily recommend going full “Warren Peace,” AWA, but I think the readers here are quite capable of choosing between reading in full, skimming, or saving for later.
.
The additions you’ve made – BLUFs, sidebars – are a great aid to skimming, by the way. And based on other readers’ comments I’d say that’s not only true for others, but that you’re also demonstrating a technique that other people are starting to use for themselves. That’s a positive impact to at least 2nd order.
.
If extended format works for you, do that. If cutting it down to an arbitrary word limit is painful, don’t do that. IMO I’d rather you not find writing to become a chore or something you resent, because I don’t want to see you decide the effort isn’t worth it for the annoyance. Selfish of me, but there it is.
Awa, I hear you, know exactly what you’re up against. As I was reading one of your longer posts the other day, I thought; damn this is a lot of work to produce this…perhaps he should present what he considers is an overview of the points he believes we all need to be aware of, as the introductory post. Then produce post two, which would be comprised of what he believes is the worst point or argument upon which everything is based. And proceed from there to break down what would be a 7000-word piece—it might end up being 14, 500-word posts on the one case, which could take two weeks, but I believe that is a worst-case scenario.
.
Or limit posting on a particular case to just the “The Four Most Insane Lies of Case…” Every post doesn’t have to be a thorough examination of the case law, does it? As Boris said, I too skim through the entire piece noting where I will go back and thoroughly engage your research, but perhaps you should categorize the case law, in a way which makes sense for us to learn, point by point, the tricks of the anti-Second Amendment crowd. If it takes five segments, so be it. And even if it takes two weeks, just as well.
.
My personal preferences are 2000-word articles but that is because, that is what I provide my customers. And most of them break that down to 500-word segments (as they view it) …. this seems to be the average content word-count that most people can absorb with a high level of comprehension in one sitting.
.
Anyway, ‘Making it enjoyable for you’ is the key for us enjoying your work. God Bless ya for swimming in the deep end of the political legal pool. Strong swimmer.
If I wanted regurgitated shit with no context fory convenience I’d just read the “actual” news.
.
This is one place I think blogs and podcasts shine, you can dig in and not have to worry that your treatise is 10,000 words to long for optimal reader engagement and thus ad revenue.
.
Ill 100% admit I don’t always have time to read the long articles or I pick and choose based on the subject that interests me the most but I still support any effort to provide complete information that combats the cut down, watered down, out of context, sound bite information bullshit world we find our self in.
.
Just looking at my groups chats with friends you can easily take a comment out of context from today and have to go back months or years to get that context and background that formed it!
.
Edit to add, I will also always advocate for what is enjoyable and doable for you. I’m not entitled to long form from you and if it become burdensome do what is best for you. I’m not turned off by it and appreciate it is what I wanted go get across.
Chapter>section>paragraph structure with breaks between text blocks.