When I read Johnson’s section on “Zoom In On Telling Details,” one online text immediately came to my mind: The Huffington Post. Ever since I gave into making a twitter account last February (I swore it was only for “following” and not for tweeting. Needless to say, things have changed), Huffington Post has taken over 90% of my Twitter feed.  During my summer internship when I had little to do, or rather when I was looking for something unproductive to do, I would often scroll through The Huffington Post’s twitter page for my source of daily news. What always struck me was the bizarre and hilarious nature of the newspaper’s tweets. I liked that they weren’t afraid to cross the line with the sometimes suggestive headlines. I was intrigued by the complete randomness of their stories. For example, a tweet from January 27^th reads, “Mom, just let me have sex in my bedroom.” If you are like me, you read this tweet and wonder what in the world this story could really be about (there is no way The Huffington Post is actually giving out how-to-convince-your-parents-to-let-you-have-sex-in-your-bedroom advice to teenagers).

Johnson writes, “To connect dots, people make inferences based on what they’re told, what they know, and what they can figure out from the context. The richness of the meaning people derive from a message depends on the possibilities suggested by the details they’re given and the situation at hand” (94). The Huffington Post is extremely good at intriguing their followers based on the context of their tweets. They more often than not touch on taboo subjects (like the “just let me have sex in my bedroom” tweet) that immediately pull readers into a story. With only 140 characters, The Huffington Post twitter page truly does not have enough room to tell the whole story. As a result, they hit on very effective details in their headlines that are irresistible and require further investigation. This further investigation was obviously necessary after I read the “sex in my bedroom” tweet.  What was the article actually about? The true title of the article read: “Teens Having Sex at Home: Should Parents Allow it or Forbid it?” Though this title is under 140 characters and could have been used on the newspaper’s twitter page, it does not generate the same amount of reader curiosity.

Side note:  Another all time favorite tweet from The Huffington Post dates back to December 14^th: “Baby seal wanders from bay, breaks into home through cat door, takes a nap.” I mean, how could you not want to read that story?

In terms of my own blog, I think the effectiveness of “telling details” is something I can really work on. I have only published one post so far titled “Senior Wine Night.” Clearly, this title couldn’t be more straightforward and doesn’t exactly evoke reader curiosity (I hope the actually post itself is more entertaining). I plan to write my next post on the restaurant “Toast” and giggled to myself when I thought about titling it “The Toast Post” (give me a pity laugh, at least). Though this title is a little more creative than my first, the effectiveness and catchiness of my titles is something I plan to focus on in the upcoming weeks!

When looking for examples of Johnson’s suggestions online, I decided to reference sites that I enjoy and see what I could glean from them. The site I chose to focus on was Slate Magazine‘s online variety. Slate’s website is rife with examples of “Choose the Right Word,” “Push Buttons,” and “Use Ambiguity for Good, Not Evil.” I was immediately confronted with the headlines “Mute Gingrich” and “Is Polygamy Really So Awful?” Both of these examples, in my opinion, push buttons and utilize ambiguity as a device.

The first, “Mute Gingrich,” is quite a wonderful example of choosing the right word, which I think includes the use of literary devices such as punning. Since puns are probably my favorite literary device, I was hooked, even though I’m tired of reading about Newt, Mitt, Rick, and Ron. As it turns out the article heavily discusses the ethics of Romney’s campaign and the effects it has had on Gingrich’s bid in Florida, not that you would gather as much from the title. I suppose in this case, Johnson’s point of “Be Clear” seems to conflict with using ambiguity.

The second headline, “Is Polygamy Really So Awful?,” actually turned out to be about polygamy being nothing other than awful. According to research by the University of British Columbia, society has evolved away from polygamy because it has social repercussions. Apparently one man having three wives doesn’t actually work. Back to the point however,  the title of this article aims to push buttons by taking a delicate and normally frowned-upon social issue and insinuating that it could be acceptable. That pushes button and ambiguously presents the content of the article. Most notably, this headline is the perfect example of “Say the Wrong Thing.” Touchy, uncomfortable issue as perfectly acceptable societal choice = wrong thing.

Considering that I am personally in love with the type of witty headlines and one-liners Slate uses to introduce and begin articles, I think I will try to take these exact methods and use them in my own writing. My first blog post is called “Have you have had a burrito that was chubby?” I could have said the wrong thing more blatantly, but didn’t want to offend. I happened to have a lot of material to work with, given that the name of the restaurant I visited was Chubby’s Tacos. Either way, I used ambiguity in naming my post, and thank you to the owners, but I think chubby was a nicely chosen word.

While much of Johnson’s work seems custom-fitted for twitter and blog headlines, leaving body paragraphs to fend for themselves, his section on recognizing and using metonyms is not only fun to read, but also very enlightening with regard to how I plan on reading and writing future articles. Much like the meme, or at least the act of referring to a meme, the metonym provides readers with an Easter Egg that makes them feel proud of being familiar with that particular piece of knowledge; as I read this sentence, I wonder if I’ve taken for granted that the term Easter Egg is in itself a metonym. No time to explain. Look it up.

As with many examples in Johnson’s book, I am surprised how frequent I use metonyms in daily conversations. As I read this section I began to appreciate the fact that my friends understand that when I call someone a backpacker, I’m not talking about someone who hikes. After my shock wore off, I realized how much fun and aggravating the use of metonyms can be especially coming from a nerd! One nerd created a site focused solely on the use of one metonym.

Comic book writer Gail Simone created the website Women in Refrigerators to explore the depiction and fate of female characters in comics; what makes her site so interesting is that its title is a metonym! While it didn’t start as a metonym, as the phrase directly refers to a scene in which a women in stuffed into a refrigerator,  a Woman in a Refrigerator later referred to any female character who undergoes a disturbing experience. Eventually a WIR became the metonym to represent the problematic representation and/or experience of a female character in any graphic novel.

I can’t wait to use more metonyms in my blog. Here are a few I might use: An “Ultimatum” move, a “Brand New Day” plot twist, “going with leather pants”.

*These metonyms refer to the death of multiple main characters, the use of retroactive continuity for the entire history of a character, and the supposed permanent, and tasteful, alteration of a female character’s wardrobe that is soon replaced with the classic sexually exploitative uniforms, respectively.

When asked to point to an example of one of Christopher Johnson’s style tenets, I thought immediately of a headline I had recently seen on MSNBC: “’Scary Potter’ movie comes to theaters.”  What’s truly coming to theaters isn’t, of course, the teenage wizard’s creepy cousin, but rather a film called The Woman in Black. This headline gets its bite from playing on the fact that this otherwise-generic horror flick is made noteworthy purely because Daniel Radcliffe – known to most Millenials as Harry Potter – is its leading man.

From Johnson’s perspective, this headline utilizes both the concepts of brevity and metaphor.  Its “less is more” simplicity gives no real detail about the movie itself – which is for the best, because it likely doesn’t vary much from other recent PG-13 attempts at horror filmography – but uses its limited space to highlight The Woman in Black’s most striking facet. Additionally, by manipulating the name of a ubiquitous character in American cinema, this title is attention-grabbing, especially because it seems “off” – we’re not talking about the actual Harry Potter, so what is this story about? why is Harry now “scary,” and what’s he doing in a movie following the finale of his series? Regardless of whether you have heard of The Woman in Black, the headline is catchy, and it piques curiousity.

Johnson also suggests that writers use ambiguity to create curiosity but warns against being too vague. My most recent blog post is titled “Things I Can’t Handle, or Why I Roll My Eyes So Much,” which clues the reader in on the content (things that are bizarre or ridiculous enough that I can’t help but roll my eyes at them) but only to an extent. In this way, the title is intriguing and a little mysterious while not being confusing or overly abstract.

As I’m new to the blogging world, I’ve been trying to expand my horizons by reading new blogs. That’s how I came across It’s A Girl Thing, a blog about “the day-to-day life of a 20-something Southern Belle” named Morgan. One technique that I think Morgan has mastered is the art of the title.

Now, in Microstyle, Johnson tells us to “be clear” and to “use ambiguity for good, not for evil”. Morgan’s post from August, titled simply “The Pledge“, may seem like she is blatantly flouting his advice. However, I don’t think that’s the case. The title doesn’t give you enough information to know what Morgan’s talking about. What pledge? A pledge to find a good guy? To drink less? You really don’t know, and that’s what draws you in.

As Johnson explains on p. 48 of Microstyle, sometimes it’s okay to be unclear. Johnson says “It’s OK for your message to be indirect, unexpected, ambiguous, or even a little vague, but it shouldn’t leave people scratching their heads”. In this instance, I think Morgan was the perfect degree of unclear. When I finally read her post and learned that she was pledging to avoid heat and chemicals on her hair, the title made perfect sense. However, that first moment of curiosity and intrigue was enough to make me want to read the whole post.

I want to emulate Morgan’s technique in my own posts. My first one, You’ll want to lick your fingers, is meant to be a little vague. It seems obvious that it’s about food, but I still want people to be curious and want to know more. Food isn’t necessarily going to draw people in, in the same way that a post about makeup tips or funny jokes may, so that’s why I want to be more creative with my titles. I’m trying to use Johnson’s advice to be vague, but not “head-scratching”. Hopefully it worked!

As an avid Strunk & White fan (my copy of The Elements of Style has not one speck of dust on it), I am most drawn to Johnson’s discussion on clarity.  In the cyber world, clarity makes or breaks a sentence.  #imsortoffeelingsicktoday doesn’t have the same impact as #feellikecrap.  Once you take away the stuff that isn’t necessary, the point rings louder.  Clarity, though, as Johnson rightly puts it, isn’t just about saying things in the flashiest way possible; clarity is about “finding the right level of attention”…and then sayingitasquicklyaspossible.

I happened upon James Delingpole’s blog while trolling through The Telegraph on an I’m-trying-to-feel-intellectual spree.  Delingpole’s article titles alone are examples of Johnson’s advice to pay attention to the right details in order to provoke your reader; for example: “The fake disabled are crippling our economy” (I imagine a few good citizens wouldn’t like that one…) or “Why isn’t Lord Lawson dead yet?” (Lord Lawson definitely wouldn’t like this one).  Delingpole’s articles are no less clear or tickling than his titles.  In “Losing Nemo,” he writes:

This is terrible. Drowning polar bears you can just about handle (especially when you learn that the story was cooked up by a pack of Arctic researchers ravening after hard cash). But what kind of unutterable bastard would you have to be not care about clownfish, probably the cutest fish in all the oceans. And also the most intelligent. In a film I saw once, a clown fish was captured in the sea, put into an aquarium at an Australian dentist’s, and actually masterminded the whole escape of all the fish in the tank back to the sea, that’s how clever they are.

Here Delingpole achieves his overarching point (I won’t point out his overarching point since my argument is that it is clear) effectively through the right amount of detail (“especially when you learn….etc”) and the right amount of clarity (“and also the most intelligent”).

In my own blog, my newly-vamped post on Pride and Prejudice puts Johnson’s idea of e-clarity into practice by using the right amount of detail in the right place; for example, the sentence, “add a few chickens, a magnificent family estate, dreary British weather and a backdrop of deep green countryside and you will find yourself in Austen’s land of Pride and Prejudice.”  Chickens, estates and weather come together to give the reader just enough information to envision the backdrop of Austen’s world.  I hope I can keep up the clarity in the posts to follow.

As I mentioned last class, Hyperbole and a Half is my favorite blog. I think there are several posts in which Allie (the author) effectively violates the writing strategies Christopher Johnson describes in Microstyle.

Let’s take this post for example: “How a fish almost destroyed my childhood.”

With the title, Allie violates Johnson’s advice to “be clear” and “choose the right word,” saying a fish almost destroyed her childhood. Sometimes headlines present confusing messages to pique interest in a story: this is certainly true of Allie’s post. By using her favorite literary device (the hyperbole), she entices her readers to click and see what real damage this aquatic creature could have done.

On the other hand, Allie also applies pieces of Johnson’s advice to her posts. For example, she literally “paints a picture” while “evoking specific situations,” especially in the form of stories that make her readers laugh. At the end of this particular post, Allie presents a drawing of her childhood-self cheering over a dinner of fish tacos. In context, this ending is unexpected (“say the wrong thing”), which casts another layer of humor over the blog.

In my own blog, my most recent post is titled “There’s a Whole New Way to Get Naked.” This title “uses ambiguity for good, not evil.” While the word naked refers to the absence of clothes, it also refers to the new eye shadow palette by Urban Decay, the company on which my post is centered. By being purposefully ambiguous, the title catches the readers’ eye and invites them to continue reading.