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.

I liked your “clothing metaphor”.

- Vivien

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

So, in answer to your question, I’m making a concerted effort to put more of the informal Carolyn into my writing.

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.