What's in a name? A deeper look at the S - by request.

I had received a request to consider why there were so many S blogs in the Nablopomo 'blog post every day in a month' competition and then to list my favorites.

First, let's consider why the S's have the most blog names. I think S is a perfectly good letter... but I've not really thought about what makes one letter more common than another. I did some looking around today and one site said that more English words begin with S than any other. I tried to look for a secondary source to support that, but I couldn't find one. We'll just say it's right. Then I stumbled upon a sight that discusses cryptograms and ranks the percentage of letter frequency and then I found this site that has a bunch of letter frequency statistics.

I would guess that S is just a very popular letter.

Now then, for my favorites. The list is over 200 blogs, let me tell you... it's hard to just pick a favorite blog name. The first thing I did was weed the list down to about 91 blogs. I dropped those blog names that didn't really catch my interest and have fairly uninteresting blog names. Then I went through the lists and tried to weed it down again, ended up with 60 blogs. Then I went to each blog and checked to make sure they were still in the Nablopomo competition (this is all prompted by the nablopomo after all and only those dedicated bloggers get the count).

I looked at the name: Did the title grab my attention? Did it make me want to click and see what the blog was about? Your title is the only way you get my click today. I was only looking at those blogs that the titles interested me enough to get my click. Without a blog description or previous knowledge of what you write about - your title is the only thing marketing your blog and drawing in your readers.

Once I entered: I considered the look and feel of the blog and how interesting I thought it was. Nice colors? Images or graphics? The layout - was it easy to navigate and a pleasure to surf through?

Now that I've enjoyed the atmosphere, how's the steak: I reviewed the content (how interesting were your posts?). Did you have a long history of blog activity? Did you get some chuckles out of me? Did you keep my interest to click through and scan many of your posts or even read posts in your archives?

What's the entertainment or side-show for the evening: I looked at your addons, widgets, and gadgets. Do you have things I can look at? Click through? Play or do something? Do you have some blog tools that I like and would want to use on my own?

So... here we go. THE TOP TEN. The winner's of Rashenbo's favorite S blog titles:

Say It, Don't Spray It

scripturient

Sex Ed in Higher Ed - OUT

(Update: I missed that she missed a post!)

Slackermama

Solipsistic Scribbling

Somewhat Refined

Sozzled

space monkey pants

Spasmodic Blog

Stinky Mouse

Sarcastic FringeHead

I wonder if I should make a little button?

The runners up who caught my eye and who I really enjoyed visiting:

Sarcomical
SchnozzFest.com
Semantically driven
Sermon on the Mount of Laundry
Sex and Salt Lake City
Shadow Muse
Shootin' The Poop
Shutterfool
Slashboing
Snapshots Into Oblivion
Streaks on the China
Sunday School Rebel