January 14, 2004

I was in the midst of cleaning out my office, having just covered the floor with books and papers. I paused the direct streaming "Fresh Air" I was listening to and checked my email, which included a colleague's description of her reasons for starting a blog. I had just emailed her about my admiration for her and my own timidity: "I'll have to think about getting up the nerve to do this sort of thing. It seems if you're going to do it, you need to become somewhat chatty and revealing, which is a strange thing to do to the entire world." Then it seemed altogether too lame not to go ahead and start the blog.

6 comments:

Icepick said...

The lack of titles for the posts is strange. You should try doing that for a day or two now and see if it upsets anyone. You know, like the old studies of people walking around with blamk protest signs.

Ann Althouse said...

I was influenced by Instapundit, who has never used the title space.

It's because of this original avoidance of titles that when I started using them, I always ended the title with a period (or an ellipsis). I thought of the title as the first sentence... like Instapundit... and I somehow imagined that at some point the software might merge the title with the text and I wanted the punctuation (which I know bugs some people).

Icepick said...

I don't know. What you've done has been so much more expansive than InstaPundit. Really, he invented the tweet.

PianoLessons said...

Ann - I've been a fan for many years and what you have done with your blog is amazing. And brave.And artistic. And fun. And sometimes annoying in a way which makes other have to prove their point. all in all - you should be proud :-)

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks, Kathy!

Brent said...

Fascinating beginnings. Thank you for referencing this on Jan 14 2018 (I began reading you in August 2004).

The title thing has worked out pretty well, don't you think? Wishing you were writing the Headlines for the NY Times. What a different world we would have today. And I mean that literally.