Posts are Not Blogs

At some point, the words “blog” and “post” got all mixed up, and now “blog” is used for everything. This remains a pet peeve of mine, so this post is a last gasp of protest before I shut the hell up about it.

• A “blog” is a publication comprised of multiple installments.

• A “post” is a single installment in that publication.

Therefore, a blog is a collection of posts.

This single post is not a “blog.” This blog, in fact, is comprised of 7,000 posts over 10 years.

Therefore, this is incorrect: “I wrote a new blog today.” No! A thousand times, no!

And do not say: “Come look at my new blog,” unless you mean the site in general, not a specific post. If you mean a specific post, then say “Come look at my new blog post.”

Saying “I wrote a new blog today” is only correct if you create a new blog, wrote a bunch of posts for it, and then shut it down. To use “wrote” in the past tense implies that the blog is finished and has been shut down, and the word “new” implies that it was just created, so somehow the lifecycle of that entire site/publication/platform got rolled up into one day.

Someone who just wrote an article doesn’t say: “Check out the magazine I wrote today.”

(However, an opinion columnist does say: “Check out the new column I wrote today.” In that case, the group and the singular is the same, which is problematic.)

For the last time: “Post” is a singular noun. “Blog” is a collective noun. You did not “wrote a blog.” You may “write a blog,” meaning you continue to post updates to a specific website, but the only thing you “wrote” in the past tense was a “post.”

(Finally, “pedantic” is an adjective.)