Legal Commentary

Horace and ?Weblog?/?Web Log? vs. ?Blog?

By Eugene Volokh

I?m working on the Fourth Edition of my Academic Legal Writing book, and I noticed that in earlier editions I occasionally mentioned ?Weblogs? or ?Web logs? ? I generally didn?t use ?blogs,? because I was afraid that to many readers it would come across as unfamiliar jargon.

But I thought that things might have changed, so I did a search on Lexis?s NEWS;US database (which includes newspapers and magazines but not blogs, as opposed to NEWS;CURNWS, which does include blogs). Since 2/10/2010, there were 1253 references to blog, and 8 to Web log or Web log. My friend Horace tells me that it?s time for a change.

By the way, I suspect that my decision was mistaken even when I first made it, some years ago ? even in the first half 2002, there were 1165 references to blog, and 235 to Web log or Weblog. But the disparity is now so great that my ?Weblog? or ?Web log? references make me seem like I?m totally out of it (which may be true for most subjects, but at least not for this one).

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).