I’m a big fan of using proper grammar. But I’m also a big proponent of keeping up with trends, both technological and vernacular. Thus, when I read about the New York Times banning the use of “tweet” by their journalists, I viewed their decision as yet another way they’ve fallen behind the times and are sticking their heads in the sand.

First let me get this out of the way: I understand the need to adhere to a standard set of grammatical rules. And I respect the tough choices that Phil Corbett, Standards Editor at the Times, has to make.

However, the Times is already under attack for not getting technology. They weren’t quick to capitalize on and adapt to the web. They’re still stuck on an online subscription-based profit model. And they aren’t playing nice with Google.

So, when I read that the Times made a conscious choice to stick to outdated vocabulary when discussing present-day technology, I shook my head in disbelief. The Times should strive to use vocabulary that is relevant and up to date, while still understandable to the general readership. Perhaps they should take it even further and try to advance the public’s knowledge of new words. One of Corbett’s arguments is that not enough of the public knows what Twitter is, much less what “tweet” means. Perhaps the Times should help illuminate and educate instead of shrinking away from uncomfortable language.

“Tweet” isn’t an incredibly difficult word to grok. “Twitter” and “tweet” are both real verbs that mean to make noise, like a bird. It’s not a huge stretch to add a highly related, nuanced meaning to the definition of tweet: To make noise by posting commentary on Twitter.com.

Twitter’s knowledge of branding is very impressive in that they use a separate, intuitive verb to describe the use of their service. Google didn’t have such a verb and has been fighting an uphill struggle for a decade, trying to prevent people from using “google” or “googling” as a verb. Their argument (the same argument Xerox has been making for several decades) is that the verb-ification of a brand name makes a trademark or brand generic. When people begin to refer to xeroxing something on a Cannon copier, or googling something on Yahoo! or Bing, the battle is lost and the brand can no longer protect its trademark. (Of course, Xerox spent lots of time and effort convincing people to use the verb “copy” and Google seems to be content with “to google” as long as it only ever refers to the use of Google.)

Twitter does not have this problem. Their brand is Twitter, and the use of their brand is referred to as “tweeting” or “to tweet.” Thus, no danger of “Twitter” becoming generic by people saying “I twittered that” or “let me twitter that” to refer to posting short messages, which could then come to refer to “twittering” on some other short message site in the future.

This is the best case scenario. It’s almost as if they thought about this ahead of time. (I have no idea if it was a lucky coincidence, but I’d like to believe that the founders had this in mind when they named Twitter.com.) A competitive site that didn’t seem to have the same luck or forethought was Facebook. Not having a verb for posting on, commenting on, or communicating with someone on Facebook, is a weak link in their verbal branding. Instead, people tend to say, “I Facebook’d that,” for posting something to Facebook, or “Let me Facebook her” to mean communicating with or looking someone up on the site. Again, Twitter has the clear leg up in this regard.

What’s funny is that I wasn’t surprised in the least that the Times would reinforce their firm footing in the past. It’s what we tech types have come to expect from the monolithic news agency. And their approved alternatives for “tweet” sound like suggestions from Ma and Pa Kent from Smallville:

“…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.’”

.
Riiiight! So instead of “he tweeted it” a journalist should instead write, “he used Twitter to write a Twitter message and say to his followers that The New York Times is totally hip and groovy.” Mmmm hmmm, yep, that’s so much better! New York Times major FAIL.

(Note: “fail” is yet another Twitter verbal meme that the Times will certainly ban for their inability to stay current with modern language use.)

“Salish Sea” was chosen Name of the Year by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on January 9, 2010.

Salish Sea was also the Place Name of the Year. This name, created by marine biologist Bart Webber in 1988, was officially adopted as the collective name for the interior ocean waters of British Columbia and Washington state. The Salish Sea stretches from Olympia, WA to Desolation Sound in BC and includes Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Strait of Georgia. The US Board on Geographic Names approved the name on November 12, 2009, after it had previously been accepted by the Geographic Names board of Canada. Webber wanted a single name for this entire body of water because forms a connected marine ecosystem. “Salish” was chosen because most of the Native American nations who lived in the area spoke languages that were part of the Coast Salish family.

Twitter was chosen as Trade Name of the Year. Although Twitter was launched in 2006, this was the year it was taken seriously as a global phenomenon. It played a major part in the protests in Iran after the disputed June election. “Twitter” was the year’s fastest-rising Google search, and it made Google’s global list (at #4) for the first time ever.

Max was voted Fictional Name of the Year because of the child hero of the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and the 2009 film based on it. tTe fact that many young parents were read the book as a child helps account for Max, Maxwell, and similar names being popular baby names today.

Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III was voted Personal Name of the Year. The name of the pilot who safely landed an airliner on the Hudson River last January illustrates how a name some might find odd and even nerdish can gain a heroic image from current events.

ANS members also voted to created a special Miscellaneous Name of the Year for H1N1, the name of the influenza virus that caused worldwide concern in 2009. The replacement of the term “swine flu” by this scientific clinical term was an unusual example of government pronouncements successfully changing a popular public term.

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based entity that documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language and publishes a list of the year’s most used English words, names, and phrases.

According to GLM’s algorithm, 2009’s most used word, both online and in print, is Twitter.

GLM’s top ten for 2009:

Twitter
Obama
H1N1
stimulus
vampire
2.0 (as a suffix attached to the next generation of everything. Ex. Web2.0)
deficit
Hadron
healthcare
transparency

A look at the Words of the Year for 2000-2008 recalls the prominent events and personalities of those years:

2000 chad
2001 GroundZero
2002 misunderestimate
2003 embedded
2004 incivility
2005 refugee
2006 sustainable
2007 hybrid
2008 change

Taking the decade as a whole, here are the top ten words with GLC comments:

1. Global Warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade
2. 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade
3. Obama- (2008 )The US President’s name as a ‘root’ word or ‘word stem’
4. Bailout (2008) The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis
5. Evacuee/refugee (2005) After Katrina, refugees became evacuees
6. Derivative (2007) Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown
7. Google (2007) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’
Surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
9. Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands [There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China.]
10. Tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives

To see the top phrases and names for 2009 and the first decade of the 21st century, explore the Global Language Monitor site.

The company Twitter already has a trademark for the name “Twitter”. Yet, strangely, there are trademark applications for “TwitterTag” and “Twitter Twail” from other companies. True, these are merely applications, but the fact that they exist at all implies that the people who filed them don’t think Twitter has much of an interest in opposing them. Twitter has already allowed dozens of companies to create software with their name embedded: Twitterrific, Twitter Digest, Twitter Analyzer, TwitterFox, TwitterBox, Sat2Twtitter, etc. By doing so, they’ve tacitly give permission for others to infringe on their trademark. If they try to defend their trademark against the new filers, what can they say? “Oh, we didn’t notice all those people using Twitter in the app names”? If you let one person use your name, you’ve opened the door for a LOT of other people to do so. Twitter, WTF?

Twitter founder Biz Stone recently wrote:

Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with “Twitter” we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line.

A little late for that, I think. And note how soft the phrasing is – “suggesting more original branding”. What happens if the developers don’t take the suggestion? Twitter’s not in the position to bring the hammer down.

Along those same lines, Stone says

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

So…why are you trademarking it again? You’re not going to go after all those companies already using it? They aren’t confusing? Good luck trying to enforce that trademark, especially since there are already more than a dozen other trademarks filed with the word “tweet” in them. Again, WTF?

This illustrates one of the pitfalls of naming that we often run into. Clients will tell us “We want our name to become an industry standard word! We want people to use it as a verb!” Well, okay, but don’t expect to own it. By letting other companies use your trademark, you are giving away your rights to a piece of your intellectual property – and once you’ve done that, it’s almost impossible to get them back. If Kleenex had a penny for every time someone used “Kleenex” instead of “facial tissue”…Genericization: you don’t want to go there.

Now, that said, there are a lot of great twitter-related domains out there!