Get your vote in- should JK blog in ink?

OK, you've spoken and I've listened.  I know that my handwriting is, well, not very pretty and some readers have requested that I stop blogging in ink.  I do feel your pain so I'm opening it up to a vote.  You can vote once a day and I'll run the poll for a week so step up and be heard.  You like the ink posts?  You hate them?  Or maybe you're one of those people who can never make up your mind?  Get your vote in, remember if you don't vote you can't complain!

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Should JK continue to post in ink?

Absolutely!   Stop that, they hurt my eyes!   I like them sometimes.

Comments

[Ctitanic]

I need another option on that poll: Keep doing it as long as you post a "translation" to English. :D

[cr0ft]

Ink notes are a novel feature but they are only bearable (IMHO) if the handwriting is good-to-excellent. Regrettably few of us geeks qualify there, I know my handwriting is childish and very difficult to read and wouldn't want to inflict it on others if there was a choice; I think the same can be said for James.

But you can always post some nice line drawings if you feel so the urge to ink coming on? ;-D

[Sumocat]

cr0ft is right: few of us geeks have decent handwriting. But who cares? More ink is good ink. Admittedly, as the "father of ink blogging" (or "ink daddy"), I am slightly biased, but I'm not alone in encouraging ink: http://tinyurl.com/2s48q2

[Greg Hughes]

As a been-there person, I vote on the side of no ink, *unless* you also include an indexable, mandatory text version. The handwriting thing can be a real downer for many, and ultimately it has to be usable for the audience. Else nothing relaly matters, and here you're writing for more than an audience of one, of course.

My two cents. :)

greg

[Jack Shainsky]

I actually like the handwritten posts, they add charm to this blog (well, there is plenty of charm here even without inked posts, but more charm is always better). People can always skip those posts if they don't like them.

[Cheryl]

Pff, the naysayers to the ink posts are party poopers. :P Although, I do agree that if you're going to do a "proper" ink post, a typed version should follow...for courtesy's sake as well as enabling the post to be indexed by blog search tools, etc.

[Rodfather]

Ignore the inkhate. If enjoy inking, keep doing it. I have no problem reading your posts.

[Aaron J. Walker]

James, I like inking as much as the next person.

With the advent of PCs, most people don't write much more than signing their name and occasionally fill out a form or two so the art of penmanship is becoming a lost art.

With practice and what they used to require in grade school when I was there, anyone's handwritting can be improved. Even the so-called "chicken scratch." But, in our keyboard based world, most of us have stopped being required to practice penmanship in the fourth or fifth grade.

With that said, and please don't take this personaly, your handwritting is, uh, extremely challenging to read.

Sumocat's blog is all in ink and very legible. But he readily admits to practicing often. If it was more like that, I'd say make ink a requirement on the whole board. However, that is not the case.

Please, practice first. Then revisit the topic in a while. Until then, I vote no ink posts.

[Sumocat]

Aaron: Yes, I do practice, but writing blog entries is how I practice. I've not written solely for the purpose of practicing my handwriting since the third grade. What you see on my blog now is the result of two years of persistent ink blogging.

Granted, James will likely need more practice than I did (and by "likely", I mean "abso-freakin-lutely"), but from my perspective, more practice means more ink blog entries. I don't know. Maybe James can satisfy both parties and start an all-ink practice blog.

[Dave Beauvais]

I voted "no ink" for three reasons:

1. It's hard to read on a desktop or notebook;
2. It's impossible to read on a Pocket PC or other handheld-class device;
3. It's not searchable using current Internet search engines and is not accessible to visually-impaired readers.

If you provided a machine-readable "translation" that would be fine and my vote would change accordingly, but if you do that, why bother with the ink at all? :-)

[Christopher Welle]

I say continue to do it. Also offer at the bottom of the post a translated to text of what you inked in.

[Jonathan Balkind]

Keep up the ink, I love reading those posts, and it doesn't take too much effort to see what the confusing word is.

You could always add a text version I suppose, since there seem to be a lot of people who would prefer it that way.

[MiniMage]

Alternate to mix it up, perhaps, but don't erase the ink forever.

[John]

I'm with Ctitanic. I usually skip the ink posts. My eyes are too old and tired for that. Heavens, I cannot even read my own inking.

[Jack (Experience Mobility)]

I like the ink posts James ... and yes, sometimes I have to really take my time trying to catch all the words but then again, that is really not a bad thing to have to take your time every once in a while....

You're to one who got me into this "tablet thing", I would hate to see the Inking aspect go ... hey, if YOU think it's a concern, give up on the cursive and start block printing.

[Rob Halligan]

I think you should enable ink comments if you are going to ink posts.

Your writing is pretty tough to read, but it's your blog. We can skip the ones we aren't inclined to read.

I wonder how OneNotes useful searchabliliy is on your handwriting.

[Xedden]

I am not a big fan of ink posts myself, but they would be much more bearable if they had the typed version also. I think they are important for one thing though. I have horrible handwriting and because of that I wasnt sure a tablet would be for me because I didnt think it would identify anything I wrote as words. Looking at some of the ink posts on JK convinced me that my handwriting was just fine and a tablet would work.

[Mark]

I would prefer an inked post with a transcription, but if I have to choose between ink and text, there's no question that I prefer text. jkontherun is sadly incapable of becoming the *only* rss feed on my list, so the faster I can get through all of my feeds, the better. :)

In addition to the speed issue, text fits into my monitor in a much more compact way, while the ink posts generally require a lot of scrolling in order to read what would normally be a third of a page of text.

[MiniMage]

I can't help but notice how the voting is going. There is another option. Use the My Font tool to make a font in your handwriting. Put up an image of your post in your font. It will still be your handwriting, but regularly spaced and consistent (and the size can be controlled). Add searchable text.

It sounds like a lengthy process to me (as opposed to other posting methods), so maybe you could do it once in a while.