Writing alt tags that matter

We all know about alt country, alt rock and now even alt classical, but what about alt tags?

A little background: The alt tag (or alt attribute -- the proper name) describes web site images to someone not able to view them. Such as blind people or dumb search engines.

Alt tags are found in the html code that controls display of graphics. The tags were designed as an aid for people with text-only browsers or those with crappy dial-up connections who turned off the slow-loading graphics. Ah, the bad old days. The alt attribute/tag works for folks with mobile devices or cheap handheld thingies.

The alt-whatever also serves people with disabilities. The computer's audio text application reads them the image description. Say (in a weird electronic voice), "Bill Clinton swears on a Bible photo." Upstanding netizens do a public service by writing thoughtful descriptions. Those who don't flirt with severe karma.

The alt tag's constant companion is the title attribute, which is automatically assigned the file name. Usually the alt area gets this info automatically as well. On Blogger, however, the space is blank. Upload the photo and dig into the html string that results. Look for this: alt="". The micro space between the quote marks is yours. Four-six words please.

Readers usually see the title information by letting their cursor hoover over the image (then the little colored text box pops up). Some browsers also display the alt tag info.

If your photo jpg file is named "mug 29-81," no one benefits. Meanie.

So the savvy and righteous path looks something like this:

• Give images destined for the Internet a descriptive file name such as "Shecky Greene photo.jpg"


• Change the alt tag to a something like a photo caption: "Shecky Greene eats birthday cake photo"

Earlier this week I did:

title='American Gangster Denzel Washington'

alt='American Gangster star Denzel Washington confronts foe'

It takes discipline to consistently write descriptive alt lines, especially when the post has other time-consuming elements. Wish I could say I was 100%.

Perhaps this side effect helps us both:

Good alt tags aid search engines in their examination of your page. The engines have moved away from the once-mighty meta tags and now focus on contextual elements such as the page's headlines, text -- and clues such as what's in the image descriptions. Hmm.

Related post: Avoid the search-engine suicide of important text trapped in images.

First person: Looking into the evil 'I'

Today, I did my bit for the environment. Called the city and ratted out the managers of the apartment building that overlooks my house.

They'd gifted me with a giant nasty mattress, one that an outgoing tenant left behind. The building's carpet cleaner came late Friday. He did his thing and left. About the same nanosecond, the giant nasty mattress mysteriously appeared up against my garage wall. The neighbors to the south had a similar gift, a grotty twin-bed mattress.

(Today is blog for the environment day. Please don't be gross when you move. End of PSA.)

"Can you at least make the building pay for the pickup?" I asked the city worker. The heinous act was good for a $1,000 fine, she told me. But ... did you see the guy leave the mattress there? Well, no, I stammered: He was there, he left, minutes later I saw the giant nasty mattress. Sorry, she said. Circumstantial evidence won't cut it.

Evidence is on my mind because I just left the downtown courthouse, where I'd been a juror until this morning's mistrial (crazy plaintiff). Last Wednesday morning, when this legal adventure started, I found myself on the pavement thinking about the government. 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. jury duty in beautiful downtown L.A. Then, that evening, the thrilling conclusion of my 12-hour traffic school -- all of which ...

OK, enough. Next topic, please.

Still with me? Most of you are long gone. To me, those opening paragraphs are great stuff, the big news out of my day-to-day. To many readers, those sentences are worthless. The stuff of bad blogs.

Journalism teachers always said leave yourself out of the story. In the 1970s, the "new journalists" (Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe) smashed that longstanding rule with a great and gaudy glee. But their would-be successors in the newspaper biz did so many pratfalls that first-person was ushered back to its rightful place in columns and on the op-ed pages.

Writing in the first person is tough duty. Intimidating. Until I started blogging, I never dared compose in the first person. During a long stretch of reviewing DVDs for print, I would do whatever it took to avoid the evil "I" -- even if the content suffered because of that linguistic limbo dance.

Now, after a year or so of blogging, first person feels pretty good. I can slip in and out of it without setting off the burglar alarm.

Some writers -- such as the mighty she-blogger Dooce -- are great at handling first person. That's their natural voice. If you're not so blessed, at least give some thought to how often you open the "I."

I just read an interesting post from Raj Dash called "41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks." Reason No. 8: Too personal.

Every time I tell potential clients that blogs can be great for business, they squint and say something like, "Aren't they just for college kids writing about their stupid lives?" (I deal with a tough bunch.) First-person content, done poorly, is about as popular as giant nasty mattresses.

My new rule: If first person makes sense and helps make the point, you'll hear from Me. If not, the writing is all straight-up.

Writing lessons from Ernest Hemingway

For the first 5 years of my life, my young mother and I lived with my "uncle," a doctor with a big house and an even bigger heart. Parke Smith and his wife, Iva, were major figures in Miami society, back when it was a relatively small town.

"Doc" loved big game fishing and docked his boat in Cuba. The slip next to his was occupied by Pilar, the famous boat piloted by the even more famous Ernest Hemingway. The men were close friends, and family lore has it that Iva became a character in one of Hemingway's novels because of a daring bathing suit she wore.

I don't know if I ever met the great writer, but I do remember the day that "Mr. Hemingway" died. I was banished to the guest house while the Smiths mourned their friend. "To Dr. Parke G. Smith in admiration for his sportsmanship," Hemingway wrote in a leatherbound book he had given my uncle. It was "Big Game Fishing in America."

In college, I spent a summer reading Hemingway under the direction of a professor who looked much like Norman Mailer. He came to class in shorts and flip-flops but always seemed to be addressing the Roman Senate. The hot wind blew through his hair at all times. He was a fine teacher, even if he read an awful lot into Hemingway's mostly straight-up writing. That was a good summer.

Can't say how much of an influence Hemingway's books and wonderful short stories had on my writing -- probably some but not nearly enough. I often think of him while writing dialogue. A great place to start with Hemingway are the Nick Adams stories.

Hemingway often held forth on the subject of writing. Here are some quotes worth passing on:

• All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.


• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.


• All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." (Have you read it lately? I have. Incredible.)


• It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.


• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.


• Develop a built-in bullshit detector.


• Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective


• Poor (William) Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the $10 words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.