I’ve written before about this, and now I’m doing it again, hoping to make it easier.

I’m still slightly floored whenever I see an author (or anyone in publishing) talk about their “blog” and not get it right. At first glance, I automatically think they are talking about their blog in general…in other words, the actual web site they call a blog. Like this blog, www-ryan-field.blogspot.com. This individual web address, and the site on which you are reading right now, in a general sense, is considered my blog.

But this particular article you’re reading is considered a post I entered on my blog.

You’re reading a blog post right now…on my blog.

You’re not reading a blog I wrote/entered on my blog.

It’s an individual post I wrote about blogging. One of many other posts I’ve written on this blog.

In the grand scheme of life is this a big thing? Not if you’re a dentist, plumber, or fortune teller. But if you’re a writer and you don’t know the difference between a blog and a blog post, there are people out there who will wonder, and some might not take you seriously.

You can also look at it this way. If you wrote a piece for a magazine, you’d ask people to read the article you wrote for the magazine. You wouldn’t ask them to read the magazine you wrote for the magazine. If you did, no one would know what you’re talking about.

And a blog post is like a magazine article…in this sense. Although there is a fundamental difference between a magazine article and a blog post, I’d think I’d rather see bloggers refer to their posts as articles instead of blogs. At least this way I’d know what they are talking about.

If you don’t believe me and you think I’m making this shit up, you can check out this web site, which I think gives two great definitions for blog and blog post:

Blog/bloggingA weblog or web page entry. Like an online diary. Written using a simple text editor and posted online usually with a simple mouse ‘click’. By tagging key words can appear in Google search words. (As at September 2007 it was estimated that there were over 108 million blogs)

Blog post An entry made by someone on their blog. As at September 2007, it was estimated near 200k posts were made a day. These can be read by the estimated 1.2 billion people connected to the internet.