August 26, 2003

Kottke Takes the Space Out of Web Log

At the always fascinating and persistently brilliant kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products, Jason Kottke is out to slash the space out of "Web Log" and make the world safe for the "Weblog."

When dealing with words generated by the Internet, where people stick bits of different words together with reckless abandon, I can understand the need for high-quality newspapers and magazines to use the proper grammatical approach in dealing with compound words, hyphens, etc. At first blush, "weblog" appears to be a shortened version of "web log" which is in turn a shortened version of "World Wide Web log", in which case the usage the media has adopted would be more or less correct ("Web log" would probably be more correct). But the evidence doesn't support this...
He's right. It doesn't. Check the links for a fascinating tour into the origins of this medium. That's your assignment for today. Will there be a quiz? Are you kidding? It's August.

Posted by Van der Leun at August 26, 2003 4:43 PM
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