The first edition of Language and the Internet appeared in 2001, with the preface predicting rapid advances in the field, and thus the need for revision on a shorter time-scale than is usual in book publication. The prediction turned out to be accurate, but in unexpected ways. I had anticipated that the four domains of e-mail, chat, virtual worlds, and the Web would evolve in interesting directions; but I did not expect to have to add an additional domain to this list – and certainly not two. Yet that is what has happened. As will already be apparent from chapters 1 and 2, the activities generally referred to as blogging and instant messaging have developed a linguistic character sufficiently distinctive as to require separate treatment. And other activities, especially in Internet telephony, are becoming apparent just over the linguistic horizon.

Blogging

Blogs were already in existence when I was preparing the first edition of this book in 2000, but they had achieved little public presence, and I was not aware of them. Five years on, and the name is everywhere, along with a whole family of derived nomenclature. Those who blog, bloggers, carry out the activity of blogging, setting up a blogsite with a unique web address in order to do so. They may also locate their page within a bigger site, which takes blog feeds from many sources, and includes other (non-blog) material.