A. Dozmorova
The material for analysis is John Wells’s phonetic blog located at http://www.phoneticblog.blogspot.ru/.
John Wells is Emeritus Professor of Phonetics in
the University of London and former Head of the
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at UCL. Mr. Wells
can be called a professional traveler having been already
visited great amount of countries (with his lectures as well
as for researches). As a result, this man speaks more or
less 10 languages often with his oral skills being better
than reading.
Topics
The blog has encyclopedic format – there are marvellous number of languages he
has something to write about.
Rating
According to presenting in the blog statistics, his posts are really popular – there
are more than 300 thousand visitors and every post has more 10 comments.
Design
Pale blue, grey and white colors create calm clarity design. As a result, nothing
distracts the reader from simply black text and brown titles as well as significant
pictures. Nothing wearies either. The blog design is acceptable.
Vividness
 Simple language without terminology and scientific jargon. The only thing
that might be unclear is abbreviations. E.g. EPD: what is it? Estimated
Progeny Differences, or Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, or something
else? The context of the post hasn’t given me the answer.
 Style of writing which looks like one belonged to an amateur rather than to
a scientist.
 Pictures brilliantly illustrate the information written.
Briefness
 Posts gladden the reader by little text.
 High degree of subjectivity makes thoughts compelling. E.g.: ‘I’m quite
pleased to have got quinoa in LPD, though I’m not aware of ever having
eaten it and I wonder how many people in Britain really pronounce
itˈkiːnwɑː’.
Connection

John’s posts are always reactions on some current or contemporary events
or publications.

John gives a link to sources. For example, food for the post ‘exotic spices’
was got from the article of the Guardian’s cookery supplement 2 days before he
wrote the post.

Wells’s posts are really just an occasion to discuss one or another
phenomenon. They regularly cause feedback and the author lively interacts with
his commentators.

At professor’s personal web page this blog is called ‘DAILY phonetic blog’. It
is not in a literal sense as de facto posts do not appear every day. However, the
blog is scheduled quite often: 9 posts for February, 15 per month and 150 per
year on average.

Titles might be hard to reveal the theme, but at the same time they cause
interest and make people to read the posts. So work on John Wells’s blog
popularity.
Summing up, the blog is successful: it serves to complex knowledge about
phonetics which accessible for everybody and is well-structured.