The Twitterati and the Times

Part of the beauty of language is that it adapts as society changes so as to enable us to express ourselves in a changing world. But part of the beauty of dictionaries, stylebooks, and copy editors is that they are slightly reluctant to change, and, in so being, they allow for a lag time to see whether words and ideas really become a part of the lexicon or whether they're just a passing fad before we adopt them as our own and print them in our newspapers.

 

The NY Times is famously rigid on style and slow to adapt, which is, in my book, most of the time OK. So, why, oh beloved NYT, have you printed the word "Twitterati" 149 times. Twitterati? Really? (And yes, some of those instances are probably in quotes and some are on NYT blogs, which should have a slightly different standard) As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether Twitter is here to stay, so it's more than a little premature to be printing Twitter-related made-up words. In the paper of record. Dontcha think?

 

End rant.

 

(Though, do check out this Flutter video.)