cluster*cluck

A few years ago when I started getting interested in HTML, I kept hearing this near-religious phrase pop up among the Web communities: “semantic markup rules.”

Well, not precisely that, but the essence for sure. As an English major at the time, I was excited. I loved semantics.

It’s not just Web developers who should concern themselves with semantic markup, though. Content folks – be they providers, strategists, editors, etc. – should familiarize themselves with the older type of semantics. When we write for the Web, when we tell stories, we should all have a good understanding of semantics and

Nope, not these kinds of semantics. (Photo credit: POPOEVER)

what it means for the construction of a narrative.

If your content is a protein, the elements of semantics are amino acids. They are our tools, our ammunition, the subatomic structures of our recipe’s ingredients. It’s as close to science as writing or storytelling ever becomes. And it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

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What my blog looks like. Photo by David Watson.

Here are some posts this week I’d strongly recommend you check out if you have a second.

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I recently left my job as a community manager and content strategist at a Lightbank-funded Silicon Valley startup. There were a number of factors (for which there will be a post soon) leading to that decision, all of them compatibility related, but I want to focus on one of those factors for a second.

I planned, branded, and executed two pretty great newsletter campaigns (if I do say so myself) for the company’s two types of users; both launches were a success by industry standards, with about a 25-26 percent open rate for both, and otherwise great conversions. For the first edition of each biweekly newsletter, the team leading this charge left me responsible for the copy and execution of the newsletters.

Despite a successful launch, when the next newsletter editions came around, one of the marketing folks that was leading the charge chopped most of my copy in half, changed the subject lines, and sent them out without my sign-off. Why, you might ask? Because, as he claimed, I was “too wordy.”

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