> BLUF is a military communications acronym—it stands for “bottom line up front”—that’s designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails.
...thus following its own advice. One sentence in and I know what it's talking about.
And that's were I stopped reading, because I don't believe there is anything more interesting for me after that inital sentence. For me it's a win, I learned something new in almost no time. Now for the author or publisher it's a win too if they solely want to inform their readers.
If the intention is to keep the readers on the site as long as possible it's completely different though. Good long-form articles that keep the suspense till the end have their place too.
Where it gets muddy, and this is my opinion the majority of blog posts nowadays, is when the authors can't make up their minds. I understand that a lot of authors have a journalistic background or at least some journalistic training, where the "Inverted Pyramid"[1] (which is similar by idea to BLUF) is held in high regards. On the other hand they are pressured by the metrics to keep readers on the site. Add to that the common SEO wisdom that Google loves long pages better than short ones[2] you end up with Chimera articles where one half want's to build suspense and the other is afraid to bury the lede.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
[2] I don't know and don't claim it's true.
Bottom Line Up Front: A military standard to make writing more powerfulWith BLUF the burden is on the writer to be clear and concise, not on the reader to make the connections the writer hopes the reader will make. Leading with BLUF and expanding the acronym later in the sentence leads with the form in which you are most likely to encounter BLUF discussed in a professional context rather than expecting the reader to read the expanded form first and make the connection that “BLUF” is the contracted form of “Bottom Line Up Front” and “Bottom Line Up Front” is the expanded form of “BLUF”.
I’ll own that mistake and leave my original comment up unedited as a testimony to my unobservant off the cuff commentary.