Blog: noun: a website, or part of a website, where someone writes (types, to be more accurate) things of interest to him/her-self and, apparently often enough, to others.
verb: post one's thoughts or make entries to a blog.
Blogging: gerund: the act of making entries into a blog and, possibly, the maintaining of a blog.
There doesn't seem to be an official definition for the term(s) yet. The above are the essentials as I see them. I would think that there should be a verb that uniquely describes the act of reading a blog or blogs. It seems clumsy to type "reading a blog", or "reading blogs", to describe the reader's part in it all. Maybe "breading" or "bleading". I could say "I was breading the other day" but people might think I did not know how to properly spell the act of procreation or that I was preparing some kind of meal. I am open to other suggestions, obviously.
I have been blogging for over two years now and I still don't understand why. It's a sort of online diary for me where I do not quite reveal my innermost thoughts. If I did that, I might be investigated by a half dozen agencies of the government*. And some might run screaming from the madness. A few weird folks would undoubtedly remain.
The most difficult part of blogging for me, other than finding a subject, is titling an entry. The title is very important, it helps to draw the reader. It needs to pique the reader's interest so he will give up his precious time, time he might otherwise spend productively, to read what you have written. Because isn't that the point? To distract the reader from something he might have thought was more important? The title should also trigger in the reader's mind a concept of what might follow. And it should also entertain in a way. At least I think it should. Which might explain some of my titles... or not.
Then we get into the length of a blog entry. Some are short, succinct, and to the point. Some are long, so long that the reader may lose the point along the way. Some seem to be long enough to explain the point without being too wordy. These are the best of the best, I'd say. I rarely manage to post them. I do not use a word processor with word counting ability so I have no idea how many words are in a post I write unless I copy the text to one which does have that feature. I use WordPad. It is free, it is adequate, and it is simple. And I am, after all, a
They say about 500 words is the "right" length. I just exceeded that.
*Another word that has multiple meanings, depending on context, and can be used to describe a single complex entity or the general authoritative establishment under which individuals function (city or town, county, state and federal all rolled into one category).
6 comments:
I think you've posed a very significant question: what do we call the act of reading a blog? "Breading" to me, suggests something to do with the act of making a loaf of baked dough. Not the act of ... you know, the other thing you were suggesting.
I like "bleading" -- pronounced bleeding? Or how about "flogging" or "frogging"? Or to make it more sophisticated "phlogging." Maybe "clogging" or "rosting" -- pronounced roasting. As in, posting, but an r instead of a p.
I don't think I've come up with the answer yet ... but good question!
free, adequate, and simple...throw in universal accessibility, fast searching, sharing, and autosaving + revision history and you have why I use google docs :)
Steven, I use Open Office but it is a bit cumbersome (slow to access) to me. WordPad is fast, simple, free, and also easy to use and I get to store documents locally with ease. But I will look at Google Docs more closely, you have yet to steer me wrong.
Well it also might be more useful to me since I'm regularly on 4 different "computers" where I might be accessing stuff, rather than always on the same one.
Steven, I share some between my laptop and my desktop. But that's easy enough to do through the home network. I ran into problems at work with common files placed on a common server. I might make some changes and someone would undo them from another location while saving their changes. Lockouts helped when they were enabled. But at first, big problems. That might have something to do with my being "gunshy."
I think you've posed a very significant question: what do we call the act of reading a blog? "Breading" to me, suggests something to do with the act of making a loaf of baked dough. Not the act of ... you know, the other thing you were suggesting.
I like "bleading" -- pronounced bleeding? Or how about "flogging" or "frogging"? Or to make it more sophisticated "phlogging." Maybe "clogging" or "rosting" -- pronounced roasting. As in, posting, but an r instead of a p.
I don't think I've come up with the answer yet ... but good question!
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