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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42486
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42486
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I know Technical Writing is not supposed to have our personalities in it, but when I taught, I sought out educational videos/resources that had a bit of personality in them. Example: [_The Oatmeal_'s violent demonstrations of the semicolon](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon), "the most feared punctuation on earth." I had an [intro-to-academic-searching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39mnu1Pkgw) video that I chose regularly because it was from an Australian university, so the different accent was memorable.

So I'm trying to start a podcast, very short episodes (about 5 minutes — so it can be incorporated in a class), and when I taught in person classes, of course my personality came through. And part of why podcasts are cool (imho) is the hosts' personalities.

But in a live class, I could adjust. My default examples are often scifi or other random hobbies, but if they're not clicking, I can adjust. (Three Rhetorical Appeals (Logos/Ethos/Pathos) went from Spock/Kirk/Scotty to Hermione/Harry/Ron.)

I guess I'm wondering if I need to pick a theme for my sample sentences (listener: "here's a sentence about bees -- clearly demonstrating an odd thing about semicolons") or just go to my whims, may lose users if they're not into B5, baking, knitting ... but they may get bored with bees...?

**Core question: How do I balance personality within sample sentences without being annoying?**

Original score: 5