Proper usage of the word posting: The difference between thread, post, posting

A post is an individual, well, post. Your original question (not the title) is a post, often called the original post, or OP. My reply is also a post. Everything posted under one title is individually a post, and collectively, a thread or topic.

You are the OP, that is, the Original Poster.

Thank you Roger.
But you haven't answered the "posting" thing. Is the word used commonly in forums too?

I use posting to describe the preparation of a post. Typing/researching/editing = all part of posting.

Once I hit the reply/enter button I have completed posting and my post has been posted.

As ehBeth said, "posting" is a multipurpose verb. It works for creating threads as well as replies. Also, threads can be considered as posts but not all posts can be considered threads. It's like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares type of language.

A posting can be a post, a singular noun.

Fixings can be food, sorry, ingredients.

It's a very flexible language.

a tad too flexible, if you ask me...

If you had a better grasp of how languages work, you wouldn't think that, Region.

Ori, post is shorthand for postal service et al. Back in the day , if you wrote a letter, it was posted with postage stamps down at the post office or post box. Similarly, If you lost a cat, you'd post a message on a telephone post or a board.
Now-a-days you might send an email, it's not really common vernacular, at least in my circles to post an email, but they may in other locales.
A2K is basically a message board. The messages or questions are posts. The notes within or under each title are also called posts and collectively they make a thread. A thread isn't necessarily a theme as many go off topic and become tangled and die. Some eventually get back on course and go on and on and on and you get the picture. And others never really get a start. Just like a piece of thread.
The act of writing a question, starting a conversation or replying to anything is considered posting. Once you're done posting and you've posted or replied to something in a thread, it's past its prime and it from then on it becomes a post.

This may be faux etymology, but I think the descriptor "thread" of what we do here, what this topic is, comes from analogy to the thread clothes are put together with. If you look at most thread, it's made up of very fine strands which are twisted together to make a stronger multi-ply thread (like most rope, but on a smaller scale). Similarly a thread in a discussion group is made up of many people replying to each other again and again, twisting around each other and reappearing again and again on top of the twist. We twist and twine around each other, sometimes for years, as the thread gets longer and longer. Each person contributes a strand, longer or shorter, that combines with all the other people contributing, to make a stronger, larger-diameter thread.

See what I mean, Region, and you are hardly the only one.

It is? But isn't a postal service a service for delivering post?

I feel a bout of the JTTs coming on, and I'll opt for the egg and not the chicken in this case.

Naaaaah, Region has been suitably schooled.

Ha! Love it. I had never thought of a thread in that way. Very true.


McT.. I know the English question threads are the favourite spots of those that love to split hairs, but I was referring to the entire kit'n'kaboodle. I don't claim to be a professor, but I'm pretty good at explaining stuff. Just painting a little picture, that's all.

Regardless, to answer you question yes. However without the service there wouldn't be much point in writing the letter. That is with any certainty that it would be delivered.

Excellent!

Yes, excellent. This is much like Humphrey Lyttleton's humorous chairmanship of the BBC radio show, "I'm Sorry, I haven't a Clue".
If you can get that on any archive broadcast service, it's well worth a listen.