Hacker News Reader

Comment by David | Hacker News Reader

It's not about his disdain for the word, it's about maintaining a vocabulary that alienates no one. As it is, even if it's been around for ages from our perspective, there are technophobes out there who have no idea what a tweet is. For their sake, it makes sense for NYT writers to abstain from using a word with less than 100% language penetration.

View on HN

With that understanding I'd just like to inject my own personal feelings onto this matter. Technophobes are like a hindrance on mankind's progress. While I don't think it would be nice (or even advisable from NYT's own business perspective) to make them feel uncomfortable, the technophobes need to feel uncomfortable about it so that they can be pushed towards acceptance of the world around them.

No word has 100% language penetration, and if the NYT desires to simplify down their writing to the point at which almost everyone can read it, they're going to have to ban words like colloquialism and paleolithic as well.

If people don't understand a word, they should look it up.

So I don't understand tweet and I go to dictionary.com to find out what they're talking about and I get:

noun 1. a weak chirping sound, as of a young or small bird.

verb (used without object) 2. to make such a sound.

Leaves me with still no idea what they're talking about.

But they can't look up "tweet" in a standard English dictionary, at least not stating this kind of meaning - that is, an update on Twitter (don't hang me up on the specifics, Dane here.)

There's a line to be drawn somewhere. At one extreme, the content is buried by the obscurity (but precision) of the language used. At the other, the content is lost to words that are too general, that have essentially no meaning. It's like trying to highlight a certain point using a laser so fine it can't be seen, or a lantern that illuminates the entire area. (Obviously they just need a flashlight.) To maintain a balance between educated and readable, they have a standards editor.

Yes, the question is not merely one of penetration, nor of avoiding arcane usage, but rather whether the word is standard English. There's no easy way to define that, which is why NYT employs someone to decide for its writers. Three criteria important for Corbett are mentioned in his missive: "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." Each criterion seems reasonable to me. Lots of words start off life as neologisms or colloquialisms and become standard. Corbett is just saying that 'tweet' in non-ornithological contexts isn't there yet. I think the argument is indefectible (one of my favorite standard English words, though it's not in the spell-check dictionary).

Fair enough. "Disdain" was a poor word choice I made, so I stand corrected.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com