Editor tells staff not to use silly words like “tweet”
June 14th, 2010 by Andy Merchant
Here’s a story that caught my attention over the weekend, The New York Times’ editor, Phil Corbet, sent a memo around to staff telling them not to use ‘tweet’ or similar words, which he referred to as “silly”.
Here is the memo:
How About “Chirp”?
Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.
Except for special effect, we try to avoid colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon. And “tweet” — as a noun or a verb, referring to messages on Twitter — is all three. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.
Of course, new technology terms sprout and spread faster than ever. And we don’t want to seem paleolithic. But we favour established usage and ordinary words over the latest jargon or buzzwords.
One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don’t; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to “tweets” or “tweeting.” Someday, “tweet” may be as common as “e-mail.” Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and “tweet” may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn’t help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)
“Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. But let’s look for deft, English alternatives: use Twitter, post to or on Twitter, write on Twitter, a Twitter message, a Twitter update. Or, once you’ve established that Twitter is the medium, simply use “say” or “write.”
Techcrunch has a couple of updates on the story:
Update: Dave Itzkoff, who blogs for the New York Times, tweets that the report is indeed not true. Which makes it a perfect satirical piece worth sharing anyway. Update 2: Another New York Times staffer tells us privately that the memo is “100% real” and Itzkoff clarifies that it is not the memo’s existence he was denying, but that some journalists inside the NYT recognise “tweet” as a word and there is an internal debate ongoing about it.
Is it true or not? Whatever the case it is mildly amusing, and highly embarrassing for the NY Times, but hang on a sec maybe the guy has a point, will the vast majority of his readership know what “tweet” and similar words actually mean?
Tags: New York Times, NY Times, tweet, twitter
