Longer

Yesterday, Inari-san mentioned that my blog posts are too short and he said it like it is not a good thing, which I don’t really understand because my posts are in a language that is not the first language, but only a second language, to most of the people who are reading this blog; and I always try to think about the people who will read what I write and what they are able to understand based on their ability and knowledge and other things. This means that when I write my posts for this blog, I always try to make my sentences as clear and as understandable as I can by using the least amount of words and the simplest expressions I can use so that it can be understood by most of the people who are reading it regardless of their English level.

If I used long, complex sentences filled with difficult, unfamiliar words, for example, only those who know those words and are used to reading complex English sentences will be able to understand them. When I use simpler, shorter sentences that basically convey the same meaning as those long, complex sentences, more people will be able to understand what I’m writing, which I think is very important and a good thing.

I also think that writing clear, short blog posts saves time for the reader and makes the reader feel more interested in reading. I don’t know how other people think but when I open a story book or a text book and see a lot of texts with very small spaces between words and paragraphs, I don’t usually feel excited to read. I think it’s the same way with other written material especially on the internet where there are a lot of distractions and people just want to get to the most important information or understand something without spending too much time reading other things that aren’t really necessary. I think this way because I feel this way a lot of times when I click on news articles or blog posts on the internet, so I’ve always tried to deliver my message by writing simple, short and understandable blog posts.

I thought it was the right thing to do from the combination of what I’ve learned in my writing classes in university, from my job as a content writer for a website before moving to Japan for the first time four years ago and from my experiences as an English teacher to a wide of range of students; but I guess I was wrong because it seems like it’s the wrong thing to do here and I am supposed to write long posts despite having the willingness to write the same things in a shorter, more succinct way.

I guess here it’s better and more appreciated to write in a longer and a roundabout way, and I have to be like I was in high school when I would elaborate on ideas and concepts that needed no elaboration just so I could reach the required number of words for a civics essay. It’s different from what I’ve learned in university and I appreciate myself as a reader, so I don’t think I will do the same thing that I’m doing right now for other things that I would write about; but in this blog I would do it because I guess it is the right thing to do.