How to Talk About Blogs
This post is going to be similar to a previous post which I published concerning the phrase “so therefore.” There’s further discussion of “so therefore” over on the WordReference.com forums where I started a thread about it.
Today I would like to talk about talking about blogging. There seems to be some confusion. I hear people, most commonly professors at my school, refer to individual blog posts as a blog. This is not only incorrect but misleading. Consider the following:
“Yesterday I read a new blog by Al Mohler.”
Upon hearing this phrase I immediately begin to wonder whether Al Mohler has started blogging at a new location other than albertmohler.com because “blog” and “a blog” usually refer, in a collective sense, to an entire set of blog posts. For example, you are reading my blog at KataDrew.com. Specifically, you are reading a (blog) post entitled “How to Talk About Blogs” on my blog KataDrew. You are not reading a new blog on my blog. That is imprecise, for I only have one blog and it is at KataDrew.com. My blog is, however, made up of many posts.
Posts are the specific, individual units which make up a blog. If I may belabor the point futher: blogs do not make up blogs but posts make up blogs. Note in the images herein displayed the usage of the word “post” in one blogging platform’s administration section (Wordpress).
One possible exception is an aggregated group blog such as that at Said at Southeastern (sebts.blogspot.com) which aggregates posts from several different blogs to make up it’s own blog in a sense, though it has it’s own posts. Still, you’ll want to refer to a post you read on Said at Southeastern not a blog you read on Said at Southeastern.
So to rephrase the initial above-quoted example to be correct and precise you’ll want to say something to this effect:
“Yesterday I read a new post on Al Mohler’s blog.”
Or
“Yesterday I read a new post by Al Mohler.”
May this help you avoid not only a personal pet peeve of mine, but imprecise language attendant with using “blog” to refer to both a blog and a post on a blog.
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September 14th, 2008 at 17:36
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