Tuesday August 24, 2021; 10:49 AM EDT
- I suspect that thoughtful writers have had many good ideas over the years about organizing information for use, and some writers have posted these ideas at the top of blog pages that presented information in reverse chronological order. After a few days, for most practical purposes, those good ideas about organizing information for use disappeared down the screen into the blog's archive, likely never to be found and used again. #
- Organizing by date of composition has a live, on-the-run feel to it and often has social value. But this information has been structured so as to hinder later use.#
- Organizing posts so they connect to related posts has a different value. Being easily able to reorganize again later--all the better. Being readily able to organize and reorganize and revise longer strings of related posts into other genres of coherent writing, such as a book chapter--fabulous.#
- A few years ago I wrote a long-winded post dreaming of a tool that would easily publish both by date of composition and by readily re-organizable, related content. That post of mine slid down the screen into the archive. Just by chance I thought of a key phrase and searched and found it. That post builds on "The Tragedy of the Stream," a post by Mike Caulfield.#
- Concordances are a reminder that much can be gained when we can choose how to organize and even how to read a book or other body of writing. Read by date of posting, read a longer, revised work from page 1 to the end. Dabble, flipping around to see what catches your eye. Sure, those all have virtues, but how about reading every paragraph that contains a key word that you want to think more about? An index might help with that. A concordance is an index on steroids.#