Strikethroughs in Blogs

I've noticed on some blogs that the authors go back and strikethrough text and make changes.  It's always kind of bothered me - maybe from a writer's standpoint in which you edit, polish, fine tune, and correct.  You don't turn in messy final copies!

Now, of course I get that blogging isn't the same as publishing.  It's casual, almost journal-like, and the same rules don't apply.  That still doesn't mean that I don't understand certain blogging customs.

Sharon explained it the best:

You know when blogging first started, some of the originators took it very seriously, like when you hit the publish key, you've sort of signed a public contract.  It was written in stone. Once you publish, you don't change anything. At most, you would use the strikeout key.

Some bloggers do this and some don't. One thing is, if you publish something, and if people start making comments on your post, any changes you make should, in some blogger's minds, be made obvious.

For example, in my post here I got some numbers wrong when I was writing about a conversation I had with David Krug. He brought it to my attention in the comments, so I went and did a strike through and put in the correct number.

If I had just deleted the wrong number and put in the correct one, folks who saw his comment would have been like, "Huh?  What's he talking about?"

So, you'll often see bloggers use a strike through to indicate a change after the post has been published. You may also see them write at the end of their post something like "This post has been updated for accuracy."

Other times, bloggers will use the strike through for humor's sake. They start to type what they really think, then they use the strike through and type what is more politically correct.

For this post, I was more giving you a peak into what I really thought--that TV is just noise, not entertainment. Most folks don't think of watching TV as being watching noise, so I wrote "sound" instead.

Now I understand, although I don't know that I'll actually use strikethroughs. 

Thanks, Sharon!

Comments

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Haha--yeah, it's a weird, wacky world we live in in the blogosphere. :-)

I think the strike through, when it's not being used for humor's sake, has a lot to do with authenticity, which is very big in blogging.

Folks associate making your corrections obvious with being honest and not trying to fool anyone. I think with most blogs (or at least for me this is true), I appreciate a little rawness, a roughness around the edges, because I feel a little closer to the real person if they're willing to show me their mistakes.

I guess the strike through is also about embracing constant change and how things (ideas, "facts", etc) tend to shift with the input of the readers.

But you're absolutely correct though--web publishing is so much different than other types of publishing. I kinda like the looseness of it though. :-)