A new usage of the word blog is emerging, and not everyone is happy about it. As Grant Barrett writes on the blog of the Copyediting newsletter, for some people blog can now mean "a single, dated, first-person post on a web site" rather than "an entire site of such posts." But according to an informal survey, most copy editors aren't on board with the new meaning.
In a post entitled "A Singular Blog," Barrett writes:
A few years ago on my own blog I posted a mini-rant about improper use of blog.
I complained, in short, that some people use blog to mean a single, dated, first-person post on a web site. Others use it to mean an entire site of such posts.
That first use doesn’t seem right. To me, a blog is an entire site or section of a site, not a single day’s entry.
At the time Jorn Barger—an early blogger and coiner of the word weblog—responded and said he didn’t mind the usage. Ben Zimmer, now language columnist at the New York Times, also responded and said, “If Jorn Barger can live with it, who are we to quibble?”
Despite those two fine fellows and their opinions, my mind wasn’t—and isn't—changed.
Barrett then offered up a survey to find out what Copyediting readers thought of the new usage. The results of the survey show overwhelming opposition to the use of blog to mean a single post.
What do you think? Is this new use of blog acceptable or abominable?
