How does a blog differ from a traditional essay?

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A Blog

A weblog, which is usually shortened to a blog, is a type of web site where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, videos are audio. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning adding an entry to a blog (Wikipedia).

Blogs-Anatomy

The features of a blog include:

  • Date header: The date the post is written. Posts are generally presented in reverse chronological order (most recent first)
  • Title: Each post is given a title. This is a pithy phrase, a pun, or even a series of symbols
  • Time stamp and/or permalink: The time the post is uploaded to the blog. The time stamp often is a link to a permanent page just for this post.This allows other bloggers to link to a post
  • Post: A word, sentence, paragraph or essay, with links and names and current news. Key words and names are often highlighted in boldface, which makes the post 'scannable'
  • Author nickname: The name or nickname of the person who wrote the post. For blogs written by one person, the author is often left off (because the author identification can be found in About page). For collaborative blogs, the author helps to differentiate contributors. The nickname can also be a link to a page of all the author's posts
  • Category: Individual postings are often labeled as part of a category
  • Comments: Asoftware feature that allows readers to leave their own comments and reactions to the author's post
  • TrackBack: A way for one blog post to link to the postof another blog. In other words, one blogger can write about the content of another person web blog, and the two posts are linked in a web (Anton Zuiker).

An Essay

An essay is a short piece of writing that discusses, describes, or analyzes one topic. It can discuss a subject directly or indirectly, seriously or humorously. It can desribe personal opinions, or just report information. An essay can be written from any perspective, but essays are most commonly written in the first person (I), or third person (subjects that can be substituted with the he, she, it, or they pronouns). Traditional essay is used for formal documents or most of the time in school (English Works).

Traditional Essay

An traditional essay is linear and without links. We write traditional essays on seperated pages. Traditional essay is step-by-step essay. You can't just skip some information. In order to find what you need, you have to go through the whole text. It has the structure similar to this example:

  • the introdution- the writer tells general information about a particular topic and the reason(s) why he has chosen it
  • the body- the main part of the essay, include the descriptions or explanations of what is given in the introductionin details
  • the conclusion- the writer summarizes the information, gives the evaluation and make the final word what he thinks about the topic (.

Links

Work Cited

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