This is not a ‘blog’ (it’s just part of one)
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 26 June 2007 at 08:56
Tags: Blogs, blogging
RBI’s blogging supremo Adam Tinworth says he has given up on trying to correct people’s incorrect use of blogging terminology:
In my day to day work, aiding and abetting blogging journalists, and as I read around blogs in general it’s becoming clear that, to most people, a blog is a post on such a site … Yes, each individual entry is a “blog”, and the site is called something like a “blog site”.
Tinworth worries that he is “turning into the electronic equivalent of the old geezer in the pub moaning about kids today and how they don’t understand anything” by trying to insist that a site itself is a “blog” while each story on it is a “post” or “entry”.
I hope he reconsiders and returns to taking a hard line on this. After all, “blog” (both as a noun and verb) has been a proper word in the OED since March 2003. It defines the noun as being short for “web log”, which in turn, is defined as:
“A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary” (OED 2003).
Other dictionaries agree that a blog is a type of web site, rather than parts of such a site.
Anyone interested in the struggles to define the term over the last few years should read danah boyd’s article on the subject.
Calling a “post” a “blog” is to confuse the sum and its parts. Pedantic subs wouldn’t stand for this sort of thing in any other context. Right, I’m off to go work on a few “magazines” — sorry, “stories” — now.
