Thursday, April 21, 2011

Don't Explain, Just Repeat (Hoot!)

I often find writing to be most limited in that I cannot be certain a reader will understand my present discourse before I go further. When conversing, I can tell firsthand if someone follows my point, and I can approach it in another fashion as necessary. With writing I can only try my best and follow guidelines, but at certain points I simply need feedback. If I never wanted to rewrite anything, the best I could do would be to vainly pepper my ideas with the phrase, "With me so far?"

It would be superfluous to write the same thing multiple times with different phrasing. If I knew what was understandable, I would only need to write that. Asking the reader if they were with me could provoke little other than rereading the part they didn't get. Last night I was revising a particularly loaded post (I'll let you know when it's done) when this fact gave me an idea.

I want to make some sort of HTML tool that you could stick in your posts just to tease this. The owl from Zelda, Kaepora Gaebora, would sit rotating his head and asking you if he should repeat himself. If you click "Yes" the page would scroll to the last spot where you placed some kind of starter point; you could have multiple owls in one post. Thus would the character famous for identical reiterations of info get his share of loving humor in reference instead of merely annoyed memories.
Unless you scrolled through a post too fast and accidentally passed him, which would automatically hit "Yes." No, I'm kidding.

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