Is it a blog or a post?

Sometimes in the throes of temporary insanity, I call a blog "post" a "blog."

Luckily I have Twitter followers to set me straight. They have called me to task on several occasions for this linguistic gaffe. 

You see, calling a post a blog is like calling an article a  magazine. And it tends to upset people who are the arbiters of what is right and wrong on line (or is it online?).

For example, Paul Hutchinson, who posts blogs at the cleverly titled "Paul Hutchinson's Blog," says he is "getting very annoyed" at what he sees as a redefinition of the venerable (since 1999 when it was coined from "weblog") word "blog".

There's Kristen Havens, who wrote an interesting blog on semantics, at her "Writing and Editing" site. Using just 485 words, Kristen mentions different ways to use post and blog correctly and incorrectly. This particular blog of hers originally appeared on a site called MySpace, whatever that is.

But the real winner is Forrest Wickman writing in Slate's Culture blog. In a blog entitled "This is a blog post, not a 'blog,'" he excoriates people like Arianna Huffington and late Roger Ebert for using "blog" when they should have said "post."

Wickman says, "I hit my breaking point a few weeks back with—who else?—Amanda Palmer."

Who else indeed? I will save you the trouble of googling her name. She is some kind of singer and performer who gave a TED Talk, which actually is pretty interesting. She drove Wickman to the breaking point by calling a post of hers a blog! Can you imagine?

Suitably censured, she now calls her blogs posts as you can see on her website. 

I hope you enjoyed this blog post.