From Columns to Posts
For Builders, Inspectors, and Writers
Walk through any construction site, and you’ll hear the language of vertical supports tossed around casually. Column. Pier. Post. They sound interchangeable, but each one carries a history, a tradesman’s tradition, and if you listen closely, a reflection of how we build with words as well as with wood and stone.
Columns: Upright in Stone, Upright in Print
In buildings, a column is the refined vertical. From Latin columna, it held up temples and cathedrals, often fluted, sometimes ornate. In engineering, it simply means a vertical member in compression.
But columns are also made of words. Newspaper and magazine columns stand tall on the page, giving structure to our daily reading. A good columnist supports public discourse just as firmly as a marble column holds up a roof. In both domains, a column must be well-proportioned, balanced, and capable of carrying weight.
Piers: Stone and Substance
A pier is massive, solid, and unadorned. In construction, it’s the square or rectangular block that bears the load of a bridge or a house beam. When speaking or writing on the subject of reference works such as a dictionary, or an archival text, the word pier might easily be used as a metaphor for the foundational nature of such a work and how it is meant to last the test of time.
Unlike a foundation hidden below grade or a pillar designed to be admired, a pier is usually plain, quiet, and taken for granted. Yet without it, nothing above can stand. So it is with reference works and archival texts: seldom glamorous, always indispensable.
Both the physical and the metaphorical are less about elegance than about mass and endurance. They don’t seek attention, but everything else depends on them.
Posts: Humble Stakes and Shared Messages
“Post” began humbly: a stake in the ground, a piece of timber standing upright. Carpenters carried the word into porches and decks, where vertical supports became “posts.” In the noble craft of post and beam, however, the post is elevated to glory—the backbone of timber framing, celebrated in barns and high-end homes alike.
In language, posts are humbler too: a notice nailed up, a letter posted, a placard stapled. Yet posts are also democratic: anyone could post a message on a wall or a lamppost. That same spirit lives on in blog posts, forum posts, and Substack posts… everyday uprights where we tack our ideas for others to see.
A poster, once a broadside pasted on a wall, is now also the person who places words in public. In both senses, the post is what makes sharing possible.
What We Stand On
So whether in architecture or writing, these upright words carry meaning:
Columns stand tall in stone and in opinion, engineered to bear weight with elegance.
Piers ground us in substance, built to endure.
Posts democratize support, from fence lines to internet lines, from barn frames to blog frames.
A deck post holds up a platform. A post-and-beam frame holds up a barn. And a Substack post? It holds up an idea.
The measure of any post, pier, or column, whether in timber, stone, or words, is whether it carries its load faithfully, and whether it stands the test of time.