Voices and Writing

Many years ago, while teaching, on one of those interminable Professional Development daze, the one inspiring presentation I saw was by a law professor, explaining how he was using the web in his courses on First Nations and Justice to build an academic journal. Every section of the class planned and wrote a peer-reviewed and edited issue, which built on previous years’ work, and would in turn be built on. He and his students used the web as a viable publishing platform in a way print never could be, economically or technically.

Years earlier, some profs at my university had the radical idea that rather than write an essay for them, you would write an essay for your peers, your classmates, who would then read them (signing them out, natch), and respond to them (as part of the final exam, usually). This was all with paper, of course, but it was kind of an analog, proto-web, in impact if not quite in form. Writing for your colleagues (who are or are becoming your friends) is way more interesting than writing for an instructor alone, which always seems a bit futile (“she’s heard it all before…”); and seeing what people ended up writing about after a seminar added precision and clarity to an often rambling oral presentation (guilty as charged, here).

My absolute favourite part of the web, the thing that makes me feel lucky every day I get to work on it somehow, as a chosen profession, is that it makes writing, and communication, and exchange far more available than print ever was or could be (sorry, graphic designer wife). Almost anyone can walk into a library or a cafe, fire up a browser, and start a WordPress or a Tumblr site within minutes. And many do. Many others need help, or a different kind of website, but the basic need is there, and while there are the Zeldmans and the Grubers of the world who have been writing on line far longer than there were blogging tools, or even the word “blog”, the proliferation of tools has made the technology fade away even more so, letting the words, the individual voice, come through even more than ever. We may not be in a golden age of the web just yet, but we are in a golden(er) age of writing, and of access to readers.

Let’s call them readers. Not users, not visitors, but readers. (Robert Bringhurst does, and if it’s good enough for him…) The site that I’ve discovered in the last year and enjoyed reading maybe more than any other I’ve come across recently is Harry Marks’ Curious Rat. Whether it’s a blog, as he and Chad Olson have been bouncing back and forth, or a column, or a project, it’s a distinctive voice, sometimes snarky, often insightful, usually funny, but always respectful of the reader and the reading experience. It’s the anti-linkbait of designs: nothing to get in the way of the reading, of the most legible experience of the words. It’s booky, but not; it’s designed, but in the classic invisible sense: it gets out of the way for you, which believe me, is harder than it looks. But you know that. It’s designed to be read, and well worth it when it is, and as someone who stares at the screen as a job and for “fun”, I think I know how rare that is. If you think I’m over-emphasizing this clarity of voice and purpose and “readeriness”, go read the Huffington Post, and come back, and you’ll see. But you know better than that anyways.

Bookmark it, subscribe to it, follow it, whatever; I can’t wait to see what it becomes in year two.