I was writing about a website earlier today, and needed to use a word that indicated the individual chunks of textual goodness thereon. I wasn’t talking about whole pages — more about the stuff on the pages. I wasn’t talking only about words, either; you know I’m very concerned about the role of images in communication, too. The obvious word for the stuff about which I’m talking, in the business context, would be “content,” but Doc has scolded us often enough about using the word “content,” and even if I were inclined to defy Doc, “content” refers more to the aggregate of a bunch of the subjects about which I’m thinking.
Are they “works”? Sounds grandiose. Are they “pages”? That’s close, but not it exactly; it’s not the page-i-ness I’m trying to convey. If they were all one genre, I could say “short stories” or “villanelles” or “mash-ups.” But I’m trying to point to miscellaneous compositions, expressions, in diverse media, each hosted at a page address but not really identical to the page itself.
You know, a. . . . [fill in the blank].
The substance, perhaps? Or the subject matter?
I was going to say “d’oh: a post” when I suddenly remembered there was a world outside weblogs.
Material?
For a somewhat similar idea I’ve used the word “snippets”, though it might be too light-hearted for your purposes-
I tend to refer to it as “the text” in my work, but that’s a result of the field I’m in.
I’ve always enjoyed the French word truc (the u has a long sound – like the oo sound in who) realizing that it is at once unpatriotic and, perhaps worse, just a cheap way of avoiding saying “thing” in English. In any event, I offer it as suggestion.