1000th post – a few stats

As with my 500th post, I am taking the milestone of my 1000th post to consider a few statistics. I started this blog on 1 November 2014, so 1000 posts in just under eight years is about one every three days (2.89 days, to be precise), slightly less often than the two and half days I calculated then, because my posts have been fewer and further between recently. 

According to WordPress, I have had readers from 203 countries and territories around the world. The top 10 are the USA, Australia, England, India, Canada, Philippines, Germany, South Korea, Indonesia and Brazil. On the other hand, I have had one reader from each of 24 countries and territories: Andorra, the British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, the Cayman Islands, Chad, Congo – Brazzaville, Djibouti, the Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, Fiji, Gibraltar, Greenland, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Guinea, Kosovo, Monaco, Samoa, the Seychelles, South Sudan, St Lucia, Swaziland and Timor-Leste. I would love to know what brought each of those here. 

My most read 11 posts (rather than 10, because the first two on this list have had exactly the same number of readers):

=10 ‘Round yon virgin’ especially the meaning of yon and the pronunciation of round yon virgin and round John virgin
=10 Fox in Socks – pronunciation and spelling a long post even though I wrote about only three extracts from the book (there was a much shorter part 2 

9 ‘A few of my favourite nouns’ one of my favourite posts

8 NAIDOC Week, Gadigal, Eora exploring some of the terminology of the Indigenous peoples of the Sydney area, then and now  

7 Grammar in Dr Seuss’s ‘Green eggs and ham’ a long post which covered comparatively more of the book than Fox in socks, above, focusing on statements and questions

6 ‘The court of King Caractacus’ another of my favourite posts – I obviously like posts based on songs

5 How to speak Aussie Abbreviate Everything – Part 1 this was meant to be the first of a series of posts covering the whole of a Youtube video, but I gave up after two

4 Biblical names in Korean  

3 Country names ending with two consonants

2 argh, arrgh, aargh, aarrgh … https://neverpureandrarelysimple.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/argh-arrgh-aargh-aarrgh/ a very short post, which doesn’t provide a definite answer. (A few days ago a colleague concluded a personal email with “Aaarrgghhhh!”. I can’t remember what drove him to that.)

and

1 “SCHOOL RUINED MY UFE” a short post, which also doesn’t provide a definite answer. 

That’s a mixed bag, but Dr Seuss, two songs and a hymn, Australia and Korea, pronunciation, spelling and grammar are recurring features. I’m embarrassed that my three most-read posts don’t provide a definite answer to the issues they address. There’s obviously interest in those issues, and my posts obviously show high in search results. (In fact, in the few days between drafting and posting this, another reader commented on their confusion on encountering the item.) My searches show my blog posts first, but possibly because I’m me. They also show that the spelling uff is also used.

Part of the reason my posts have been fewer and further between recently is because I am now working as a legal editor and not as an English language teacher. There are legal editing blogs but it’s not where my interests really lie. I do it as a job but I don’t really want to spend my spare time writing about it. The other part is the disheartening lack of comments most of my posts get. I wasn’t and am not expecting thousands of comments from hundreds of commenters, but some (more) comments from some (commenters) would be nice. I try to answer all comments, but I’m aware that I’ve missed some. My first goal is one substantive comment per post, then one per day (whether on the same post or not). After that, I would like to grow a small community of like-minded people. Not many, just enough. I’m still an introvert online.

Advertisement