'Times' Editor's Request To Not Use 'Tweet' Still Not a Ban?
Hey, have you ever worked in a job? Maybe you have! (Lucky dog.) And when you have worked in that job, when someone up the ladder from you tells you to not do something, except on special occasions, don't you agree to not do it? Correct! Why would you antagonize the executive class? So you know, Times standards editor Phil Corbett is disputing that he "banned" the word "Tweet" from the Times. To be fair, "ban" is a broad word for his-what's okay to say?-"shaming request"? "Not quite demand"? "Not-an-order-but-what-else-is-it"? Whatever gradations you want to put on this proposition are too Byzantine and complicated for me. Now, all that being said? I'm still not on the side of the people who think the Times is stupid in their quest to not use the word "Tweet." Take it away, Tom Scocca: "What's infuriating about all this modesty is that 'Tweet' deserves to be banned, for precisely the reasons Corbett says it does: it is a colloquialism, a neologism, and a piece of jargon. It is a stupid, unnecessary, trivial word, and it makes the writing in which it appears seem stupid and trivial." Also, still not future-proof!
As of eight minutes past Choire's posting of this article there has been one "retweet" of it.
It's just as egregious as writing "Google" as a verb. Sure, go ahead and use it in everyday speech (asshole), but don't use it in an article because you were too lazy to enunciate an 'internet search'. It's just a lazy, unnecessary promotion of a product.
Ok, don't whine about it. I'll get you a Kleenex and we can talk about it over a Coke.
I like "googling" partly for the reason STC implied, partly because all internet searches aren't created equal and Google is some small indicator of some kind of quality.
Hey JP! Tell it to Merriam-Webster! Why dontcha!
Does Corbett have brown eyes? Otherwise it's not a ban.
That's a double digit comment right there. Quality stuff.
Cheez, I thought that tweeter was a misspelled twitter -
2 stop twittering about Francis blather, jabber, blabber, chatter, chitter, gabble, go on, blab, rattle, yap, prattle, babble, blither, ramble; informal yak, quack, yabber, talk someone's ear off.
Well, it is apparent that traditional print media is finding itself in a very sensitive position. New outlets like the Times seem willing to embrace only so much of today's omnipresent new media technology. Quite frankly, I think it's somewhat noble of the Times to take a stand against some of the more vapid jargoneeering so common in technology. But what about "re-tweet"?
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2010/06/no-tweeting-at-the-new-york-times/
Stop talking shit on After Deadline.