Ban the Blog!

Celebrated Vogue editor Anna Wintour steps up a little late to the plate to put the hex on the word “blog.”

According to Tim Dowling on the Guardian Unlimited’s ... er, blog:

The editor-in-chief of US Vogue has apparently decided that the word blog is vulgar and refuses to let it be used on the Vogue website. It is said that she has even told staff to come up with a replacement before the website is relaunched.

Wintour may be mistaken in assuming that she can bring her personal taste to bear on the language like some one-woman Académie française, but there is a wider point to consider: many of our internet neologisms have been foisted upon us by a small band of technogeeks with a weakness for portmanteau words, bad puns and unwieldy acronyms.

While it’s a point well made, it’s too little too late. I can’t imagine we’ll be re-christening the blog any time soon. As Dowling concludes, aside from being a corruption of the words “Web” and “log,” the word “blog” has come to mean not only a technology, but a specific style of communication. And though she might successfully pronounce on hemlines, lipstick shades and whose shoes to choose, I can’t imagine that Wintour’s declaration will have any result other than slowing Vogue’s progress into the 21st century.