Blogger Recognition Award

A few weeks ago I was catching up on blogs when I discovered that one of my blog buddies had received the Blogger Recognition Award.  While reading through the post, I received a happy surprise: they had passed on the award to several others, including me!

Many thanks to Our Crossings for this honor.  I appreciate the recognition.  Aiva and Valters at Our Crossings write with skill and passion about their travels near and far as well as their lives as Latvian expats living in Ireland.  Be sure to stop by their blog and have a look around.

About the Blogger Recognition Award

This award is given to bloggers by bloggers. It helps promote a blogger’s work and provides recognition, as the award’s name suggests.

The Rules

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and add a link to their blog
• Write a blog post on your site displaying the award
• Describe why you started your blog
• Write two pieces of advice for the new bloggers
• Nominate and notify 11-15 other bloggers

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I started blogging because…

… it provides me with a platform on which to relay my travel stories, mishaps, and experiences, along with the occasional non-travel-related thought, idea, or musing.  It’s also a great way to sharpen my writing skills, in addition to being a fun hobby.

Two pieces of advice for new bloggers:

• Engage with others in the blogosphere.  This doesn’t mean you have to comment on every post you read, but if you have a thought on someone’s writing, reach out and share it.  Engagement makes the whole endeavor more rewarding, and you’ll find that you’ve made penpal-esque friends, some of whom you may meet someday!
• When I was interviewed by Mel at Life… One Big Adventure , she asked me what I think makes a good blog post, the answer to which is the start of my advice for new bloggers.  To quote myself:

No matter what the topic is, it starts and ends with good writing: good grammar, well-thought out sentence construction, coherence, conciseness, organization… all the stuff they teach you in school.

However, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to get a tad more specific with that advice here.  The biggest word usage error I come across in the blogosphere is with number vs. amount.  More to the point, it seems that most people aren’t sure when to use number, so they default to amount every time.  Luckily, there’s an easy way to remember which to use.  If you can count it, it gets “number.”  If you can’t count it, it gets “amount.”  So, for example, can you count people?  Yes you can!  One person, two people, three people, 100 people.  So, you would say, “The amount number of people at that out-of-the-way museum surprised me.”

1. The number of visitors to Croatia continues to climb.
2. The number of cycling jerseys the husband owns is bordering on ridiculous.
3. The Travel Architect will cap the number of examples on how to use “number” at three.

On the other hand, can you count love?  No, you can’t!  You can’t say, “Honey, I have 15 loves for you.”  Can you count smog?  One smog, two smogs, 84 smogs?  No!  So use amount.  “The number amount of smog in Beijing was even worse than I had feared.”

1. Our tour guide conveyed a huge amount of information.
2. The husband always marvels at the amount of cheese I put on… well, everything.
3. The amount of time the husband spends watching English soccer makes me crabby.

And a few sentences with both, just for fun:

1. I exchanged a large amount of money before my travels, but due to the unfavorable exchange rate, the number of British pounds I got was depressing.  (You can’t say, “I have 46 monies,” but you can say, “I have 46 pounds.”  See?)
2. The amount of food we ate in SE Asia was astonishing.  We couldn’t believe the number of dishes that were served at each meal.   (You can count dishes, but not food.)

I know, I know… enough already Travel Architect!  OK, I’ll stop.  But new bloggers out there, this one easy fix will go a long way toward making your writing better and thus, more likely to get readers and the associative blog love.  And if you think I’m being an insufferable know-it-all, rest assured that I have my own language struggles.  Here are but three:

• lie, lay, laid, lain…%$&!@#
• farther vs. further… where’s the dictionary?
• I know “alumni,” but alumna, alumnae, alumnus?  Gotta look ’em up every time.

Finally, I’d like to pass on this award to several bloggers who are more than deserving of recognition*.  Here they are, in no particular order:

• I’ve Bean Travelling – Travel and food… do we really need anything else?
• Wanderlust Travel & Photos – You’ve never seen trip itineraries this thorough and useful.
• Running to Travel – An inspiring mix of travel and motivation.
• Swinged Cat – Fun and quirky posts by a professional writer.
• To the Airport… and Beyond – A taste of (mostly) Asian adventures.
• Lady Red Travel – Travel tales from six continents.
• View From This Spot – Fun snapshots of their travel adventures.
• Southern Girl Blogging – Everything under the sun; useful and very compassionate.
• Big Tiny World Travel – Try not to be jealous as you follow their year of full-time travel.
• Life… One Big Adventure – Travel, art, and more in Australia and beyond.
• dawn2dawn photography – Photography so breathtaking it leaves me speechless.

*I know that not everybody is interested in participating in blogging awards.  If that describes you, no hard feelings.  Just know that your blog is admired and enjoyed.