Question: do you try to be formal or informal on your blog?
This question can be a fun way to see how you look at your blog readers. Do you try to be formal or informal on your blog?
Different people act differently in the offline world. Similarly, people may act informal or formal depending on their own character and also depending on the situation. Do you try be formal or informal around your blog readers? Do you maintain the same type of behavior on your blog, or do you usually switch between being formal and informal?
You may have a business blog and may be informal on it, and you may have a personal blog and may be formal on it. You can look at several things to see if you try to be formal or informal on your blog. Following are a few traits of how you can be formal or informal on your blog.
Being formal vs. being informal on your blog
Being Formal : sharing little details from your personal life, interacting with readers only to discuss blog topics, maintaining a more typical business-type atmosphere on your blog, hoping to have more non-personal relationships [business partner, distant friend, etc] with readers, etc.
Being Informal : sharing a lot from your personal life, interacting with readers to discuss almost any topic, maintaining a more typical personal atmosphere on your blog, hoping to have more personal relationships with readers [close friends, associates, etc] , etc.
You should remember that what some consider informal may in fact be considered formal by others, and vice versa. You have to figure out yourself whether or not you consider your behavior or expectations on your blog to be more formal or informal.
What is your opinion on this? When you blog, do you try to be formal or do you try to be informal?
Please let me know. Thank you for reading. 
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( May 20th, 2007 at 10:23 pm )
I am VERY informal when I blog. I’m also very informal when I comment on other blogs… I’ve never tried to be formal when I blog, and while commenting either. I guess it’s because I comment on personal blogs only, and those are mainly the blogs I read, so that’s why a lot of things I write online are very informal. Most of the e-mails I write to people that I know online are informal also. I’ve never really thought of any of this as being formal, because when I first came online, the only blogs I saw and read were informal, so I’m very used to it, since I’ve been online for 5 years now… LOL… Wow, sorry, long comment that probably did sort of got off-topic… LOL…
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( May 20th, 2007 at 11:47 pm )
I am fairly formal by nature, I think. Most of my writing experience has come from writing technical documentation and reports and so informality isn’t easy for me.
I do try to be informal as I think that is a better way to foster participation but I think this is further curtailed by the fact that I try to present well considered, and complete, articles and automatically try to cover all the bases which leaves little room for comment sometimes.
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( May 21st, 2007 at 1:43 am )
SimplyPrecious, thanks for sharing that. I think you have both an informal and a formal way of blogging. It just depends on the topic/day/class/etc you are writing about, or the specific person or scenario you describe in a post.
I am guessing that many times one does not realize if their writing is formal or not since their focus is on conveying the message depending on the audience. That is why one may not notice how they are writing since they may be very good at certain styles of writing because of experience.
I like your comment, by the way; it’s not off-topic at all!
Andrew, thanks for sharing too. That makes sense; you have done a lot of technical writing, and thus you are more comfortable with that style [formal] of writing. That is the same thing with SP when it comes to informal writing; she said above that she has seen a lot of it and experienced it a lot also since she first started blogging, so she is pretty comfortable with it now.
You bring up an interesting point; sometimes being concise or even explanatory makes it hard to be informal in certain situations. Being formal is usually taken by many people to be something that is said without being very specific, so in informal discussions people can chip in anytime and offer almost any opinion.
Thanks again.
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( May 21st, 2007 at 9:28 am )
Ironically, Bes, I was just thinking about this earlier today and decided I needed to add a little more personality, informality, transparency, into my posts. We talk about being part of a community, but we can’t be a community if we don’t share ourselves.
So, in answer to your question, I’m making a concerted effort to put more of the informal Carolyn into my writing.
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( May 21st, 2007 at 9:48 am )
I guess I’m formal when I write about very serious things that I want people to put a considerate thought when reading what I have to say, and I’m being informal when I want people to relax a bit and don’t take everything too serious.
Usually, when being informal I simply add a few bits of humour into my writing or share my personal experience on the subject matter.
Sometimes I just can’t help it, I’m simply being me – serious one moment and facetious in other
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( May 21st, 2007 at 11:21 am )
I don’t try to be either. I just do what comes naturally. It depends on my mood and the subject I am blogging about.
I won’t go crazy being open online, and if there was something that I wouldn’t do/say in real life, then I wouldn’t do/say it on my blog. In real life I’m generally a very private person, except when it comes to the few people who I will open up to. Although, I think when you have a personal blog, you need to be somewhat more open than you would generally be in real life, because describing things in typed words can be more challenging when you’re trying to get a certain point a crossed or project a certain emotion of feeling.
Sometimes I treat my blog like it’s someone I’m close with, sometimes I treat it like an acquaintance, and other times I treat it as a place where no one’s looking. It all depends on what my mind is thinking and what my fingers decide to type.
When it comes to my relationships online, I’m generally more formal with them, except for a few.
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( May 21st, 2007 at 12:45 pm )
Carolyn Manning, that is indeed interesting about you thinking the same thing earlier! We need to share something with the community also, in order for the community to feel included too.
I am looking forward to seeing that in your posts.
Vivien-inspirationbit, good point. Sometimes, many people take things seriously when they are said or written in a formal manner.
It is probably good that you are being you, and are being formal and informal when it is the right time to be so.
Nicole, thanks for sharing the status [formal or informal] you choose when it comes to different things like your blog or online relationships.
So basically online you behave as you would offline. You are right; personal blogs are somehow expected to be more open than usual, thus signifying their “personal” nature, even if the blogger is not that open in the offline world.
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( May 22nd, 2007 at 5:25 am )
First of all, I try to spell words correctly
In fact, I don’t speak the English language so well as to care of this things: sometimes I’m just mixing styles at random (also because at school I’m taught a sort of scholar English language, but I read many blogs on the net).
Of course, in my own language I don’t have this kind of problems: I notice I tend to be more formal when writing long articles I think are worth appearing in search engines/digg/etc, and informal when blogging about nothing important at all.
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( May 22nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm )
Thanks for the reply Andrea.
It is interesting that you mention that; I also have to make sure that I do not misspell things, or that I try to use the same format of spelling throughout an article [colour with flavour, flavor with color, etc].
The long articles are sometimes, or many times, articles with a lot of information that people can bookmark or consider authoritative, so they can require more official or sometimes very clear wording to make sure the sentence in the articles are understood as soon as they are read. I like mixing writing styles, sometimes at random, by the way.
Thanks again for sharing, Andrea.
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( May 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 pm )
i am probably more on the informal side, although i am ALWAYS aware of the fact that everything i write may end up all over the internet. so perhaps i would say that i am carefully informal. to use a clothing metaphor – i don’t show up on my blog (or anywhere else in cyberspace) in my pajamas or holes in my shoes
this reminds me of an interesting experiment we did at the northern voices bloggers conference a few months ago. in this post, i show how we looked at various blog characteristics (e.g. years of blogging, how “zen” or “busy” the look and feel of our blogs was, etc.) and graphed them in human sculptures. i guess formality vs. informality could have been part of this, too.
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( May 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 am )
wow, Isabella, what a pleasant surprise to see you here – another blogger from Vancouver, BC
I guess it would be true to say – what a small universe this blogiverse is 
I liked your “clothing metaphor”.
- Vivien
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( May 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm )
isabella mori, thanks for the comment. I like your clothing metaphor too.
You are right; what we say online can end up being available to everyone online, or many people might come and read it on our own sites. Thus, we have to be aware about what we say.
That link you gave is a very interesting one. Those characteristics in that post, including transparency, are important factors that bloggers need to keep in mind. And yes, I am guessing formality vs. informality can also be part of that analysis.
Thanks again Isabella, I really appreciate your opinion on this.
Vivien-inspiration, it is indeed a small blogiverse in some perspectives, isn’t it?
Yes, the clothing metaphor is a good one. Many people online use random metaphors and expect an invisible logic to connect what they are saying with the completely unrelated metaphor. Clothes, however, are similar to being informal or formal because they try to address, among many things, one common thing: appearance.
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( May 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 pm )
I’m definitely much more informal. Because my specific target it law students, I figure after reading pages of legal cases, they don’t want to read stuffy writing on their blogs.
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( May 24th, 2007 at 11:48 am )
Thanks for sharing that Brett. That is a good path to take; aiming at law students using non-law lingo, in order to make the visitors feel comfortable. I like that mentality, and it can be a very nice niche too.
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[...] week or so back Bes asked everyone, do you try to be formal or informal on your blog? I commented that my technical background made it easier for me to be formal; however, that is far [...]