Finding Your Voice: Writing for a Webzine...Philip E. Agre

People have used a public voice in the past, but it must now be adapted in order to be appropriate for the Internet. Successful online writing requires a new etiquette and ethos. The voice you use on the Internet is similar to the voice people have used throughout history, when in serious discussions face-to-face. Writers must be conscious of how their words come off sounding to the audience. Agre writes, "To have a public voice, you must learn to combine two seemingly contradictory goals: being true to your won experience and values while also serving as a consciously designed intervention in an ongoing public debate." Because the visual effects of face-to-face communication are not usually evident in online communication, at this point, the audience can easily misunderstand the tone or connotations behind what the writer is saying. It is important to consider the risk of ambiguity and to anticipate questions or reactions that an audience might have. Agre says, "You may know what you *intended* to say, but you cannot know how much of your intention was actually conveyed by your words." This is important to remember, and it requires that people take a new approach to the way they write.

The most difficult part of writing is to establish an audience, and in order to achieve that, a writer must create a conducive public voice. Journalists still have the same responsibility as previously in history, and that is to simplify complex information so that the common public audience can understand it. Just like learning AP Style, developing a public voice takes practice. Two of the suggestions that Agre makes that I found most helpful were to, "Choose someone you identify with and copy their voice -- not their exact words but their style -- until you get comfortable," and, "Contribute to public discussions by responding to others, rather than by initiating your own topics." By looking at how other people do it, we can identify aspects of our own writing that are worth developing, and we can discover what is unique about our individual voice. And, I agree that commenting on another person's writing is a good way to start because you can build a rapport with other writers and people who read them may like what you have to say and may become interested in hearing more from you. I was also inspired by the end of the article when Agre talks about having to care about something. It is helpful to think of developing a public voice about something specific, as a process that is never-ending. Once you discover what you care about, you can find or create a community to share your ideas with. I find that the hardest part of writing, for me, is deciding what to write about. It is definitely easier to write about something I'm passionate about though, and it is inspiring to think that as a writer I could give a voice to a community's values, as Agre says, and that, "You can provide a public service by learning how to explain your values to people who don't yet share them."