weblog

I recently saw the word weblog in a Bruce Sterling story (“Black Swan”) that was published in 2009.

Which surprised me, because even I, who disliked the word blog for a long time, was writing blog casually by 2002, and I think of Sterling as having been usually somewhere near the cutting edge of the tech world at the time.

And no, the usage in the story isn't intended to indicate a lack of tech savvy; the word is used in narration by the very tech-savvy tech-journalist narrator.

In fact, later in the story, the same narrator casually uses the word blogger. Which makes me wonder whether Sterling originally wrote the word blog instead of weblog. The story originally appeared in Italian; I wonder if somewhere along the route of translation and publication in English, someone replaced blog with weblog.

One Response to “weblog”

  1. -Ed.

    It looks as if the last time I used weblog unironically was in 2005, but that in 2007 I was still linking to sites that had it in the URL (as it might be blahdeblah.com/weblog/2007/entries/march/wecertainlywillneverregretthisorganizationalscheme/index/index.htm). Given the lead time on publication—presumably even longer for a story in translation?—it’s plausible to me that the choice to use the word was made toward the end of the time that both words were being used. No actual idea, of course.

    Thanks,
    -E.

    reply

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