Dear Bloggers...

I wish to register a complaint.

I know it hasn't been all that long since blogs became popular (what, 4+ years?), but can I ask you to do me a favor?

First let me give you some background information. I can probably count using fewer fingers than both hands contain the number of people that I know that read blogs by going directly to a blog's website. Most people today have some sort of newsreader (if you're reading this and you don't, I highly recommend trying Google Reader, it used to suck, but now it sucks less, and 2 years ago or so I found that it sucked less than Bloglines, but I digress) that can organize, aggregate, and sort the various blog "feeds" that they are interested in. They can either read each news feed individually, or perhaps groups together, or all at once, if desired.

Personally, I organize by subject matter (flying, technology, drivel, etc), and sort by oldest first so that I can read your entries in chronological order, and read one subject at a time. This brings me to my complaint.

When remarking about something that was previously posted on your blog, please reference is temporally instead of spatially. This is no longer a print world. Just because your blog website displays posts newest first, doesn't mean that when I read your article, I will be able to reference something "below." In my little world, "below" means you're referencing something you haven't written yet (at least at the time of writing the original post). Try the word "earlier" or "previously." Using one of these words (or some other time based reference word) will allow your post to remain in the content world instead of mucking with the presentation layer.

There. I feel better now.