As a writer and teacher of writing, I always look forward to Lake Superior State University's yearly list of Banished Words. And somehow I wasn't surprised to find "blog" and all its derivations on the 2005 list.
Granted, it's a graceless and cacophonous word, coined by someone too bone-lazy to say "Web log." And now that I think of it, Tim Berners-Lee should have thought twice about naming his creation the "Web." The purpose of a web, after all, is to halt travel and permit killing the traveler. The system we use is supposed to expedite travel and leave the traveler better off for the journey. ("Journey," by the way, is also a banished word!)
At the risk of being banished for another neologism, I suggest we're stuck with blogs because of "crystallization." Typewriter keyboards had many different layouts until QWERTY crystallized them. Computers had many different operating systems until Windows ruined life for all but us fortunate Mac users. So "blog" is now built into the language, just as "Web" is.
Nice piece, though I have to clarify the origins of the word “blog.” It was started when Peter Merholz, a prominent Web designer, somewhat jokingly suggested Weblogs be called “wee'- blogs” or “blogs” back in 1999. When the the company Blogger launched a few months later offering an easy way to create Weblogs, the term stuck.(http://peterme.com/archives/00000205.html)
Helping the adoption of “blogs” was the fact the term “weblogs” also refers to the files recording traffic to a Web site.
Posted by: Craig | January 05, 2005 at 06:57 AM