Wednesday, August 3, 2005

That word again!

Rebecca asked about the citation I mentioned in this entry, and whether Peter was, in fact, credited with the coinage. I went to look again and realized that, in fact, my reference to Peter's comment appears to pre-date the comment itself. That may be because his quip was in an undated sidebar on his site. Anyway, here we are, sic transit gloria mundi, caveat lector, etcetera etcetera...



Note also that this appears to be a draft entry which, I take it, means it hasn't moved into the printed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary just yet.

The OED entry for "weblog", incidentally, cites Jorn Barger—rightly, I think—as being the first to use it in this sense in 1997 on his Robot Wisdom weblog. (Back then, of course, we knew it as http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html.)

It is defined as "A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary."

That's the second definition, of course. The first definition for "weblog" is "A file storing a detailed record of requests handled (and sometimes also errors generated) by a web server." I remember back in the late 20th century when there was some concern people would hear the word "weblog" and not understand which sense was meant.

Thank heavens Peter Merholz came along and gave us a convenient shorthand, eh?

Monday, August 1, 2005

Present at the birth

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from Bill Johnston, a professor of history at Wesleyan University, that left me momentarily gob-smacked:

You might have received millions of messages to this effect, but did you know you are cited as the first to use the word "blog" in the OED (1999)? Very cool. Not many people have an honor like that; I'm delighted to see that your site is still going strong.

As it happens, his was the first and, so far, only message about the matter I've received, but I went and looked in the online OED—one of the perks of the occasional academic life is free access thereto—and, sure enough, this little ol' website is the first citation for the word. (I haven't had an opportunity to examine a printed version of the dictionary, so I don't know if it's included there as well.)

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, let's be clear: I am not claiming to have coined the word "blog". I've been dragged along that sort of road before and don't care to repeat the experience. As far as I know, my pal Peter Merholz has to take the blame for it, having waggishly proclaimed six years ago that he was henceforth pronouncing "weblog" as "wee-blog". I made a note of his jape hereabouts and it is to that weblog entry—currently languishing in The Lost Archives but hopefully soon to be republished—that the OED citation refers.

(And I must apologize to Mr. Johnston because, although I transcribed his e-mail here for just this moment, I seem to have misplaced the original and, therefore, his address. I have the distinct impression that I never got around to replying and thanking him for his kind note. Bill, if you're reading this, do be in touch.)

Anyway, I bring this dreary subject up for two reasons.

First, I have been enjoying the Lady Rebecca Blood's interviews with some of the early practitioners of the weblog form, including Matt Haughey (in which piece this site is again name-checked) and Jessamyn West. They are two of the folks I have been privileged to have as part of my life this past few years, thanks primarily to our shared interest in personal publishing, and each has an unique perspective on where the web has been and where it may be going.

Second, despite my rather contrary insistence on referring to this site and others like it as a "weblog" (sans truncation), it has recently come to pass that I will soon be writing and editing a site that is not only called a "blog", it has that word in its name.

Somewhere at this very moment, I feel certain Peter Merholz is either smirking or cringing.

Possibly both.