You may be wondering what the hell is going on with this blog.
Well, let me tell you this: instead of writing a new blog post over the last two weeks, I’ve been focusing on other, much loftier pursuits.
Why, just the other night I was supposed to be ‘getting serious’ and writing a new blog post, when an unnamed source close to the writer of this blog asked me what it was that I was actually doing.
I decided to come clean with him.
“I’m writing the word ‘arse’ in Comic Sans, ” I replied.
The unnamed source thought I was joking but then I showed him:
You may be wondering why I would do something as bold as write ‘arse’ in the world’s most reviled font.
It was a protest, see. A protest against the indented paragraphs in this new blog template I’ve chosen.
I hate it.
See?
There it is again.
It’s the kind of thing that, instead of inspiring me to write witty prose, drives me to look up the spelling of ‘unitard’, google images of dried fruit that resembles Luke Perry or write things like this:
But can I find another template that will suit my carefully-crafted banner head? No, sir, I cannot. (And yes, by ‘carefully-crafted’, you can safely assume I mean ‘hastily slapped together in Microsoft Paint after two-thirds of a bottle of wine’. I mean, that’s a given.)
So, what do I do? Do I walk away from this blog and reinvent myself YET AGAIN? Or do I just accept my fate as the indent’s bitch?
All advice considered. No, really.
* Edited to add: if this post seems really confusing because you can’t see any evidence of an indent, this is because I took that blog template and I changed that bitch.
Queen NDM, The Best 
Where’s the ‘like’ button?
I happened upon your blog for the first time yesterday. Today I am commenting. This is most unlike me so prepare to have a new stalker. I have good news: posts sent via email subscription are not indented. This puzzled me. I am lying in bed avoiding my children so I went to the web version. iPhone defaulted to the mobile version which is not indented either. I went to the full version (you can see why my children learnt to make their own breakfast at an early age huh?). The full version is the only one indented. I don’t know a lot about html but I know that the only things removed from mobile sites are pesky, take too long to download pretty things (like your MSPaint header, which is quite lovely) so that this means the bastard template creators have added indents as a DESIGN FEATURE.
I wouldn’t stand for it. I have nothing against graphic designers, in fact I have a friend who is one so that allows me to make this inflammatory statement: they can’t spell for shit and grammar, punctuation and style guides are just seen as impediments to their important work of determining kerning or serif. You are being held hostage.
But I think your use of comic sans is brilliant return fire. A fatal blow to the ego of the GD who thinks indents are pretty. I think you have won this battle.
As a graphic designer, can I just say that Carol is absolutely right. We are shit with the dictionary but think we are gods of style. However I agree with your indent crisis – it does suck. Any Microsoft people out there who know how to remove it?
As a side note can I just say that you’ve inspired me to use the word Arse in a text message today? And it’s not even 8am. That’s power NDM. Arse power.
Can I comment in Comic Sans?
Obviously not….
Oooh – and look – I made another indent….
You need to do something that will make sure that you are writing to us again. Because some of us are feeling severely deprived. I love your header. I don’t care about the indents, not so keen on the black background. Can’t you keep the header and get a new text template? I don’t know. WordPress – too hard…
The intents bothers me less than the black background. I am old, and do far too much squinting as it is. Thankfully on email it is neither black or indented. I think that means I win.
Know what you mean about the ordeal of searching for a template that will accommodate your darling header. . . and then you find that other crucial features suck! Yeesh. That said, I agree with the others, and don’t care what it looks like as long as it’s words from you. (My crazy eyes struggle with white on black too. But only a little. Don’t lose sleep over these eyes of mine.)
step away from the Comic Sans. It isn’t worth it.
Trust me.
x
Feck. Girls. Drink.
All I can say is I dont like the black, I want a more fluffy colour!
Truly, I will read your blog no matter which font or colour you use – it’s all about your fantastic wit. (I do love your wine-inspired banner too.)
Well…the best thing about blogging is that there really are no rules. So you can have a blog look any way you want it to.
I like indents.
You see, this is a new paragraph – but if the full-stop of my last sentence had been further to the right, you might have been confused and thought you were still in the same paragraph. Which would be awful. (Is this a new paragraph? You see the problem.)
Of course, it’s always possible to leave a gap of one line between paragraphs but what if you insert a quote? This is an important skill for any writer; as H.L Mencken said of Shakespeare,
“all he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations.”
The problem is that no-one knows if this bit here is a new paragraph or a continuation of the paragraph containing the quote. Not even me.
But an indent solves everything. Like a nice cup of tea, or a jelly baby.
I’m into the indents, but not into the way this blog reformatted my reply so that it now appears differently from the way it appeared when I typed it. That is definitely bang out of order, because now my second/third paragraph makes no sense, and the indent I carefully inserted at the end has been deleted. Deleted!! What’s with the differential treatment, I’d like to know. Indents for you, but not for me…
Poor comic sans. The clown of sans fonts. It never had a chance. The indents are worrisome. You may have to h t m l or pass it off as a quirky bonus feature of your blog. Do post again soon. xx
As a graphic designer, I’m kinda offended by Carol’s comments. My spelling is frickin’ shit. hot. So is my grammar. Like, 98% of the time. In my line of work I am constantly appalled by the totally shit spelling and grammar I have to typeset and make beautiful but am not allowed to change. Because that’s not my job. So there.
Great to have you back though, NDM. Indent or no indent. But if you ever, EVER use comic sans again… x