Accurate Nomenclature Can Be Fun
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve seen it a lot lately and been thinking of mentioning it again. This sentence quoted from an e-mailer to Glenn reminded me:
Please issue a correction in your next blog.
My first thought went something like “you might have to wait a long time for Glenn to start a new blog!”
Come on people. A ”blog“ is a type of web site, generally composed and posted to using some kind of blogging tool (as opposed to hand coding). A blog is composed of ”posts,” for which a good synonym is ”entries.” They usually go in reverse chronological order, are readily identifiable as to date and time posted, are attributed to an author, and each has a permalink.
Again, blog, a noun, means a web site of a particular type that contains blog posts or entries.
Blog, a verb, means the act of creating posts or entries and publishing them to a blog.
Post, a noun, means an individual entry to a blog.
Entry, a noun, means an individual entry to a blog.
Post, a verb, means to publish an entry, or a post, to a blog.
The following two sentences mean the same thing:
“I haven’t posted today.”
“I haven’t blogged today.”
The following two sentences do not mean the same thing:
“I started a post today.”
“I started a blog today.”
When I see someone use “blog” as a noun substituting for “post” or “entry,” I cringe, and I think “newbie.” Possibly even to the internet, almost as much as to blogging. Or else someone who cares not to learn and use correct terminology, even if they are somehow finding blogging success and longevity. Or else someone who is not a blogger at all, and has not learned the term, as is a possibility with Glenn’s heckler. Which isn’t so bad, as the garbled nomenclature only bothers me when I see bloggers using it.
Perhaps sadly, I find it more grating than gratuitous “it’s” or “you’re,” or failure to use pique or queue where peek or cue won’t do.
my biggest pet peeve on the net is the use of “sight” when you mean “site”, as in websight rather than website.
Sheesh.
Posted by caltechgirl on 08/19 at 05:45 PMYes! I’ve actually seen site used to mean sight a lot lately.
Posted by Jay on 08/19 at 06:07 PMSome “professional” bloggers use the word “blog” to mean “blog entry”. Author Laurell K Hamilton and her husband Jonathan are two offenders. It takes some getting used to.
Posted by Josh Cohen on 08/22 at 07:10 AM
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