Mon 31 Jan 2005
Blogging Down With OED!
Posted by Chad under Blogs
A CNN report last night said that the word “blog” is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. The same report also cited that 62 percent of all Americans have never heard of a blog and wouldn’t know what one was if they saw it. I wonder what percentage of that 62 percent read the OED. While it’s probably not an ideal marketing tool, it is very cool that the definintion is there. If you have access to the OED, check out the etymology of the word. It’s pretty cool.
January 31st, 2005 at 4:47 pm
While I have no doubt the news report said 62% of all Americans, that’s not what the Pew report said. It said 62% of American *adults who use the Internet.* Doing quick calculation (comparing Pew’s claim of 120 million American adult internet users vs. the 2000 census’ total of Americans 18 and over), that comes out to 80% of all American adults.
And as Karen Schneider has pointed out, a significant portion of that 62% (but not of the non-internet-using adults) has encountered weblog entries indirectly, via Google and other engines.
February 1st, 2005 at 12:16 am
Hi, its interesting how we add new colloquiolisms to our dictionaries such as googling something or A9ing or yahooing.
We say what we do these days. And now we blog, or go blogging like visiting friends in the blogosphere.
By the way I enjoyed the Internet Librarian Conference very much, it was my first.
Cheers
February 1st, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Thanks, Walt, for clarifying this. I figured that CNN was citing the Pew report, although it now appears that it was a little out of context.