Hit and run posting. I may be the last to notice the term, a hit and run post, but I just saw it at Too Many Chefs, attached to a nice little recipe for sliced avocadoes with chile powder and lime juice. (Add kosher salt if you wish, they say.)

The term seems to criticize, yet their posting about the avocado dish is complete, with something for an interested reader to take away. Let's call it an appetizer post, then -- after all, it's a complete dish, just a small one not intended to be the main course. I contrast it to posts I see occasionally and ones I have to resist in myself on busy days, posts that point to something useful but do little more. I ran across one of these the other day in a student's blog and judged that the writer was using the posting like a research notecard -- listing a promising source. I also contrast it to those posts by famous bloggers who use the credit they've acquired with their audience to avoid saying anything more than "follow this link."

So this post I'm writing right now has no hope of being larger than a hit and run post -- I hope it's an appetizer, and if so, it needs to end soon. I've used it to think through a tiny distinction for myself: an appetizer post is a small complete dish, prepared by a careful blogger and sufficient in itself, while a notecard post is essentially a reminder of something that deserves more attention that the writer is not willing to give just yet. The one is worth publishing, and the other probably should not be posted yet. [0 & P]