Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Just wondering: how long can a Blogger post title run? I mean, at what point does Blogger just shorten what’s there into something more manageable? Or does Blogger not do that? If it doesn’t, a title could conceivably go on for the length of a screen, or more. Which makes me wonder whether anyone has tried to work out an answer to this question. To do so, you’d have to type and post a really, really long title. You’d have to have some genuine content to it; otherwise, you’d just be running at the mouth — or the fingers — to see how long, or how far, things can go. Such an exercise would be in some way pointless, and yet it might be the only way to answer the question. Of course, any garden-variety advice on making post titles runs counter to the spirit of this inquiry: the usual advice is to make things short, so as to “grab” the attention of readers and make it easier for them to “share” what you’ve written. But, I mean, come on: a short title may be nothing more than merely calculating and predictable, built from “key words” to maximize search-engine attention. OED! Squee! Twerk! And sharing a post with a long title takes no great effort: the words weigh next to nothing, and the URL will exclude all but a fraction of the post’s title. At any rate, I’m not convinced that a short post title is the “key” to anything. I’m still not sure though how long Blogger will let a post title run.

But I think I’ve answered the question to my satisfaction.