No one refers to individual articles in Harper’s as “magazines”. So why are blog posts increasingly (I have no evidence that it’s increasing, but that makes it a “trend”) considered “blogs”?
{ 2008 06 26 }
{ 2008 06 26 }
No one refers to individual articles in Harper’s as “magazines”. So why are blog posts increasingly (I have no evidence that it’s increasing, but that makes it a “trend”) considered “blogs”?
srah | 26-Jun-08 at 11:49 am | Permalink
That drives me insane. Especially when bloggers do it themselves.
this blog is overrated | 26-Jun-08 at 11:55 am | Permalink
And they’re probably the same people who make fun of “internets”!
golightly | 26-Jun-08 at 2:10 pm | Permalink
Verbs beget nouns. “I’m blogging this” leads to the product being called “blogs” and not posts. “I’m posting this” just doesn’t cut it.
this blog is overrated | 26-Jun-08 at 3:46 pm | Permalink
But then blogs are recursively defined! A blog is a collection of blogs is a…
Molly | 27-Jun-08 at 1:33 pm | Permalink
It’s totally increasing. I’m hearing it from people who might be described as the “older generation.” The people I know personally who call blog posts “blogs” are generally computer savvy, use the internet, read blogs, and sometimes even blog themselves, but the vocabulary for all of it seems to escape them.
Young Urban Amateur | 29-Jun-08 at 9:43 am | Permalink
Actually I think I can figure it out–compare to “I’m going for a run”–”run” is the present indicative of “to run”. “Blog” is the present indicative of “to blog”. So, if you can have “a run” then you can also have “a blog”. It’s admittedly an inconvenient fact, however, that the collection of these blogs is itself called a “blog” (and that *that* “blog” came first, of course).
Probably the counterargument to this would be to note that “to go for a run” is maybe just a kind of compound verb. But we don’t have to get into that; just say that it’s confusing to call both blogs and blog posts “blogs”, that the former came first, and be done with it.
(The problem with *that* is that it leaves us w/ no catchy word for “blog post” or “blog entry”, which sounds kind of nerdy if you have to say it over and over again. And of course, none of us are nerds here.)