Not As The Scribes

1. Blog title is key: I find that a reference to world literature or something poetic usually gets people going.

2. Stay away from using the word “book” in reference to something you’re reading. Instead, use more specialized words, like “monograph,” “work,” “epistle,” or “volume.” “Tractate” is especially good.

2b. Also with books: figure out some way to display all the books you’re reading at any given time, even if you aren’t really reading them then. That way people will know you’re up to your eyebrows in work. You’ll want to keep the toll up to at least fifteen books volumes on any given day of the week.

3. Likewise, avoid easy-sounding words. Instead, use a Thesaurus to find harder words. Usually the clunkier the better.

4. Use Employ Latin whenever and wherever possible.

5. Three words my friends: long block quotes.

6. Make sure to provide unsolicited detailed bibliographic information, such as number of pages and place of publication.

7. Employ German whenever possible.

8. God didn’t give us bold, underline, and italics, for no reason!

9. Employ any other foreign languages with which you may have only the faintest acquaintence, especially those that may require special browser encoding or rare fonts, whenever possible.

10. Never abbreviate or use conjunctions, except when referring to an idea or a figure. Thus, one may, for example, in place of Jesus Christ, use JX or JC, but one should never use “couldn’t,” “wouldn’t,” “shouldn’t,” or the like when the full term will suffice. This sort of thing detracts from formality and gravitas.