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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

"How to Write an Incendiary Blog Post"

As a service to our guest-bloggers, and via Arts & Letters Daily, here is a cute piece from The Boston Globe on how to write an incendiary blog post.  Here's the first paragraph: 

This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention, but really has very little to do with the topic of the blog post. This sentence claims to follow logically from the first sentence, though the connection is actually rather tenuous. This sentence claims that very few people are willing to admit the obvious inference of the last two sentences, with an implication that the reader is not one of those very few people. This sentence expresses the unwillingness of the writer to be silenced despite going against the popular wisdom. This sentence is a sort of drum roll, preparing the reader for the shocking truth to be contained in the next sentence.
The author later writes: "This sentence contains a link to an Internet video featuring a cat playing a piano."  And the piece concludes: "This sentence invites readers to respond freely and without constraint as long as those responses fall within certain parameters. This sentence consists of an Internet in-joke that doesn’t quite fit the topic."

Comments are welcome, as long as they are civil.  This means you, Patrick!

Posted by Paul Horwitz on February 17, 2010 at 01:09 PM in Paul Horwitz | Permalink

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Comments

Sentence fragment indicating (incorrectly) no other prior responses to this post!

Posted by: Dan Bodah | Feb 19, 2010 1:34:59 PM

This sentence is not self-referential except to the extent that it is.

Posted by: Matthew Reid Krell | Feb 17, 2010 1:55:25 PM

This sentence says that I know you won't publish this comment, but you neglected to consider a point that is not even germane to the post. This sentence makes it clear that I'm very angry because there is some trivial difference in our world-views.

Posted by: Bruce Boyden | Feb 17, 2010 1:39:22 PM

I don't know about a "cat playing a piano" in general, but any blog post that links to Keyboard Cat is A-Okay with me.

http://playhimoffkeyboardcat.com/

Posted by: Matt | Feb 17, 2010 1:20:21 PM

That's an awesome piece - really, really funny! Good find, Paul.

Posted by: anon | Feb 17, 2010 1:19:26 PM

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