A blog as a single web site entry
I’ve got very few language peeves, but I’ve been sitting on one of them until I’m ready to burst.
It’s this: the use of “blog” to mean a single entry or post to a blog web site. As in, “Today’s blog is going to be short, but I’ll write a longer blog tomorrow.” Examples are abundant.
See, when I joined this merry blogging trade in 1999, a blog was a web site. The whole site. In fact, it still is. Or at least it’s a cohesive sub-site, like the blogs a newspaper web site will also host for its writers.
The correct choice is either “entry” or “post.” You can have a “blog entry” or “blog post” but you can’t have a “blog blog.”
It bothers me because it adds confusion rather than clarity. When I first came across this usage I really thought that someone was creating a brand-new reverse-date diary-style web site every day.
At some point, there’s going to have to be a disambiguation, in which one of the meanings of “blog” will fall away and the other will continue. Will it mean a whole web site or will it mean a single entry? I’ll check in again in ten years or so. Currently, it’s clearly the newcomers which are using the word this way and they still seem to be in the minority.
Ten-days, ghosting, pogo-sticking
Recent interesting catchwords from the Double-Tongued Dictionary are:
ten-days n. in Trinidad and Tobago, a temporary job.
ghosting n. leaving candy at someone’s door, knocking, and then running away before they answer.
pogo-sticking n. on the Web, going back and forth from a main page to various sub pages in search of information, usually as a result of being unable to easily find something.
Bryan Garner: making law and language more comprehensible
Despite its ridiculously hagiographic overtones—"leading lexicographer of our time” and “greatest living lexicographer” are just two of the preposterously unverifiable statements in the article, and the first one is in the headline—I recommend taking a look at this interesting
D Magazine article about Bryan Garner, author of
Garner’s Modern American Usage and editor of
Black’s Law Dictionary (8e).
Flexting, couch homelessness
Recent interesting catchwords from the Double-Tongued Dictionary are:
flexting n. flirting via text messaging.
couch homelessness n. not having a home of one’s own and taking temporary shelter with friends or relatives.
The hackneyed headline triple play
The headline
Wired Youth Aim to Stir Peers and Sway Poland’s Vote contains three of the most hackneyed words used by lame headline-writers in North America: “aim,” “stir,” and “sway.” All it needs now is “spark” and “controversy” and it’d be a grand champion.
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