6 ms·

New York Times Bans the Word 'Tweet'

48 points by joubert 16y ago

mikeleeorg 16y ago
That seems a little futile to me. It's like trying to ban "google" as a verb. Or "xerox." NY Times' standards editor Phil Corbett can set whatever rules he wants for the paper, but his disdain for this verb isn't going to influence all of the blogs, the social media, and other publications in using it.
- David 16y ago
  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.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    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.
  - kevinh 16y ago
    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.
    - janzer 16y ago
      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.
    - ichverstehe 16y ago
      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.)
    - David 16y ago
      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.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - pigbucket 16y ago
      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).
  - mikeleeorg 16y ago
    Fair enough. "Disdain" was a poor word choice I made, so I stand corrected.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  NY Times' standards editor Phil Corbett can set whatever rules he wants for the paper, but his disdain for this verb isn't going to influence all of the blogs, the social media, and other publications in using it. I don't think he's trying to. I think he's saying that Twitter is not yet in the standard English lexicon and should therefore be postponed from appearance in the NYTimes. If at such time it does become as popular as Xerox or Google then perhaps they will reevaluate their stance. As far as his position on usage outside the NYTimes, he may personally dislike the world but professionally I don't think he cares either way.
  - jfarmer 16y ago
    I was at a wedding two weeks ago, filled with non-technical, non-Silicon Valley folks and in one of the songs before the wedding they ad-libbed in the word "tweet" for "call" or "write" or some other verb. Everyone in the audience got the joke and laughed.
    - deno 16y ago
      Though it should be noted that you only need just enough people to get the joke for a whole audience to laugh.
  - mikeleeorg 16y ago
    That's a good argument. I stand corrected.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    So by getting into the standard English lexicon (whatever that is??), every speaker of English automatically understands the word "tweet"? Fascinating how these old timers achieved automatic updates. What is the standard English lexicon, who maintains it, and why is it accepted as an authority? Why has it not been replaced by the internet yet?
    - ramchip 16y ago
      You seem to be seriously confused on the meaning of "lexicon". The standard English lexicon is defined as the words and expressions a standard English speaker knows. If everybody understands "tweet", then it is part of the lexicon, and nobody can decide otherwise.
- smilliken 16y ago
  "Web search" and "photocopy" are perfectly fine alternatives. Neologisms have their place, and they enter common vernacular for a reason, but I can't help but cringe when a journalist is reporting on the "Twitter-sphere", getting worked up about how teens are "sexting", or anything like this. The Times is better than Fox News, and I expect more professionalism. I'm probably just crotchety, but I expect different levels of discourse from different mediums.
  - mikeleeorg 16y ago
    The comments here have entirely changed my mind (cheers for that). I totally agree with you now. I've also cringed at journalists using too much vernacular (so I was obviously being a hypocrite in my first comment; shame on me). And you are absolutely correct - in professional reporting, clear language should always be used, not colloquialisms. It makes for much clearer and unbiased reporting.
chc 16y ago
It seems quite sensible to me. There really is a significant portion of the population that has never even heard of Twitter (remember, there are lots of people who try to sign in to Facebook by typing "facebook login" into Google and blindly clicking on the first result), and they're probably disproportionately well-represented in the Times' readership. It's not about hating the word "tweet," just about "tweet" not being common among the 6.5 billion people who don't use Twitter.
- Tichy 16y ago
  I think I might just have got the concept of a conservative newspaper. The idea is to never shock your readers with anything out of the ordinary.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Clarity. That’s the idea. Don’t use words many of your readers won’t understand (except for special effect). “She wrote on Twitter …” is much clearer then “She tweeted …” and it seems obvious to me that whenever writing formally, you should use the first. Just as you would write “He searched the web …”, not “He googled …” in formal writing.
    - moolave 16y ago
      It definitely has something to do with formal editorial usage than drinking the Kool Aid amongst many institutions. But because of this single word "tweet", almost everyone in pop culture can get a good sense of what this writer is talking about by remembering this new phenom. The only culture barrier that I see is if institutional writers do not want to use the word, then it won't change the Twitter ecosystem. As a matter of fact, Jack and the team initially did not like using that word. It was only when the Twitter ecosystem starting vastly adopting it that they finally adopted the term. Pop culture, once again, wins.
grandalf 16y ago
Considering the embarrassing way that the NY Times has attempted to transition into the digital age, this is not really a surprise. Consider: - The Times has tried twice to create paywall models that have utterly failed. The idea was to charge to read Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. Utter disaster b/c nobody really values them all that much even though they get a lot of web traffic when free. - The Times does very little investigative journalism of significance. - The Times has strong pretensions, as evidenced by its coverage of socialite weddings, etc. - In the buildup to the Iraq war it was the Times' sloppy fact checking that sold the war to many, many people who had been skeptical prior to reading its coverage. - The Times attack on the Pulse news reader turned what should have been superb publicity into a petty attack on a small startup that obviously loves the Times. For all its flaws, it's still a great paper, but far less great than it once was or than it could be if it had more sense and guts and had to fight harder to maintain its position. Banning a word like "tweet" suggests an annoying sort of editorial rectitude that is at least as unbecoming as any of the foibles mentioned above, especially in light of the Iraq war fact checking fiasco. We have wars going on and all sorts of corporate fraud and the Times is wasting ink (or pixels) on why it banned a silly sounding word?
- pigbucket 16y ago
  The paper should do better. But one of the things it tries to do well is language use, and one of the reasons it does it well is that it has people like Corbett working on the problem of what constitutes good writing and usage. Words matter, even if "tweet" is not a good example of why they matter. Corbett and his predecessors have done all kinds of interesting stuff, some of it fun, some educative, but some serious, serious especially when it comes to reporting on war: Do you call this group terrorists, or insurgents, or resistance fighters; do you call that group anti-Israeli, or humanitarian, or pro-Palestinian? We've taken this memo out of its native context and taken it as a sign of some deep problem at NYT in its relation to technology, but "tweet" is a drop in the ocean of language problems that Corbett deals with. Check out some of his public musings here: http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/author/philip-b-corbett/ http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/author/philip-b-corbett/. I see no reason why an institution as important as the New York Times should not do a whole lot better in the ways you suggest, and also continue to try to set some basic standards for writing.
grellas 16y ago
The problem with this memo is that it conflates the use of "tweet" as a noun (useful and precise) with its use as a verb (much too casual for formal use). I agree with the author as to the latter but not as to the former. There are some contexts in which a certain level of formality helps keep an elevated tone that suits the forum. I think the New York Times is one such forum. It has a long tradition of maintaining "standard English" and at least some significant portion of its reader base might be jarred should its reporters suddenly lapse into forms of expression that depart sharply from that standard. "Tweet," though, at least when used as a noun, is really what I would call a "term of art," that is, a form of expression that captures a range of attributes not easily otherwise expressed except in wordy or imprecise ways. Casual-sounding as it may be, it is the one word that describes perfectly the form of short message that one transmits to those to whom one is connected on the Twitter platform. Thus, in one word, it describes: 1. The type of platform on which the message was sent (Twitter). 2. The fact that is 140 or fewer characters and hence either a short phrase, single sentence or two, or other informal expression of thought about a subject (as opposed to any form of carefully developed argument or expositional form of expression). 3. The fact that it is sent originally to those who are "following" such the sender, who may be but likely are not intimate with the sender (Twitter being a very public platform). 4. The fact that such a message can easily be spread virally by those followers to others who are in turn "following" them or can be linked to from a wide variety of sources from all across the web. Given that the paper's own (highly skilled) writers had used it 18 times within just the past month confirms this. "Tweet" (used as a noun) is a good, solid word - precise, accurate, pithy, and almost certainly carries a meaning that is well known to anyone who knows what Twitter is. I don't think it has a good substitute that is not either wordy or imprecise compared to the word itself. That is why it is a useful term of art. For that reason, it makes no sense to dissuade use of "tweet" as a noun, and I think the memo author is plain wrong on this. I would side with him, though, when it comes to "tweet" as a verb (as in, "I will tweet you"). This is much too casual for a formal publication such as the times. There is of course nothing wrong as such with this verb, and the issue is strictly one of tone. But the author is right that, in terms of tone, the word is misplaced in this particular publication. Edit: point well taken, ismarc - a different rationale from that of the memo writer but a sound point about avoiding reader confusion, at least until the term acquires broader general usage.
alexandros 16y ago
There is a certain irony in claiming that '"tweet" has not yet achieved the status of standard English', and yet "it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections". Surely, the NYT considers itself a good sample of standard English usage?
Tichy 16y ago
"Tweet" is already on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet So anybody reading the NYT could easily look that up, in case they lived under rock for the past three years.
Grinnmarr 16y ago
According to Dave Itzkoff, an employee and frequent contributor to the NYT, this is a hoax. http://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/15847765293 http://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/15847765293
- donohoe 16y ago
  Nope, not a hoax, but not a 'ban' either
sfphotoarts 16y ago
I presume ornithology articles are exempt from this.
est 16y ago
from the guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  Flag it then. Meta-comments like this aren't very useful.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  from the guidelines > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
hristov 16y ago
Makes perfect sense to me. That will have additional advantages as it will allow the Times to weed out a lot of fluff pieces about who tweeted what.
T_S_ 16y ago
I am banning the phrase "reach out". Call or email me if you object. Tweeting is ok too, if I am following you (unlikely), but please don't reach out to me. edit grammar
siculars 16y ago
I seem to recall more than a few articles over the last decade on how best to refer to the internet, or web sites or email. The tip of the spear is always the smallest, but hardest point. There will always be some new communications medium that only a rarefied few use and understand before the rest of the world catches on. In that in-between time there is apathy, confusion and even resentment.
Mgreen 16y ago
Banned? FTA: “Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. Definitely not banned.

48 points by joubert 16y ago

That seems a little futile to me. It's like trying to ban "google" as a verb. Or "xerox." NY Times' standards editor Phil Corbett can set whatever rules he wants for the paper, but his disdain for this verb isn't going to influence all of the blogs, the social media, and other publications in using it.

David 16y ago
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.
- coderdude 16y ago
  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.
- kevinh 16y ago
  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.
  - janzer 16y ago
    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.
  - ichverstehe 16y ago
    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.)
  - David 16y ago
    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.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - pigbucket 16y ago
    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).
- mikeleeorg 16y ago
  Fair enough. "Disdain" was a poor word choice I made, so I stand corrected.
Locke1689 16y ago
NY Times' standards editor Phil Corbett can set whatever rules he wants for the paper, but his disdain for this verb isn't going to influence all of the blogs, the social media, and other publications in using it. I don't think he's trying to. I think he's saying that Twitter is not yet in the standard English lexicon and should therefore be postponed from appearance in the NYTimes. If at such time it does become as popular as Xerox or Google then perhaps they will reevaluate their stance. As far as his position on usage outside the NYTimes, he may personally dislike the world but professionally I don't think he cares either way.
- jfarmer 16y ago
  I was at a wedding two weeks ago, filled with non-technical, non-Silicon Valley folks and in one of the songs before the wedding they ad-libbed in the word "tweet" for "call" or "write" or some other verb. Everyone in the audience got the joke and laughed.
  - deno 16y ago
    Though it should be noted that you only need just enough people to get the joke for a whole audience to laugh.
- mikeleeorg 16y ago
  That's a good argument. I stand corrected.
- Tichy 16y ago
  So by getting into the standard English lexicon (whatever that is??), every speaker of English automatically understands the word "tweet"? Fascinating how these old timers achieved automatic updates. What is the standard English lexicon, who maintains it, and why is it accepted as an authority? Why has it not been replaced by the internet yet?
  - ramchip 16y ago
    You seem to be seriously confused on the meaning of "lexicon". The standard English lexicon is defined as the words and expressions a standard English speaker knows. If everybody understands "tweet", then it is part of the lexicon, and nobody can decide otherwise.
smilliken 16y ago
"Web search" and "photocopy" are perfectly fine alternatives. Neologisms have their place, and they enter common vernacular for a reason, but I can't help but cringe when a journalist is reporting on the "Twitter-sphere", getting worked up about how teens are "sexting", or anything like this. The Times is better than Fox News, and I expect more professionalism. I'm probably just crotchety, but I expect different levels of discourse from different mediums.
- mikeleeorg 16y ago
  The comments here have entirely changed my mind (cheers for that). I totally agree with you now. I've also cringed at journalists using too much vernacular (so I was obviously being a hypocrite in my first comment; shame on me). And you are absolutely correct - in professional reporting, clear language should always be used, not colloquialisms. It makes for much clearer and unbiased reporting.

chc 16y ago

It seems quite sensible to me. There really is a significant portion of the population that has never even heard of Twitter (remember, there are lots of people who try to sign in to Facebook by typing "facebook login" into Google and blindly clicking on the first result), and they're probably disproportionately well-represented in the Times' readership. It's not about hating the word "tweet," just about "tweet" not being common among the 6.5 billion people who don't use Twitter.

Tichy 16y ago
I think I might just have got the concept of a conservative newspaper. The idea is to never shock your readers with anything out of the ordinary.
- ugh 16y ago
  Clarity. That’s the idea. Don’t use words many of your readers won’t understand (except for special effect). “She wrote on Twitter …” is much clearer then “She tweeted …” and it seems obvious to me that whenever writing formally, you should use the first. Just as you would write “He searched the web …”, not “He googled …” in formal writing.
  - moolave 16y ago
    It definitely has something to do with formal editorial usage than drinking the Kool Aid amongst many institutions. But because of this single word "tweet", almost everyone in pop culture can get a good sense of what this writer is talking about by remembering this new phenom. The only culture barrier that I see is if institutional writers do not want to use the word, then it won't change the Twitter ecosystem. As a matter of fact, Jack and the team initially did not like using that word. It was only when the Twitter ecosystem starting vastly adopting it that they finally adopted the term. Pop culture, once again, wins.

grandalf 16y ago

Considering the embarrassing way that the NY Times has attempted to transition into the digital age, this is not really a surprise. Consider: - The Times has tried twice to create paywall models that have utterly failed. The idea was to charge to read Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. Utter disaster b/c nobody really values them all that much even though they get a lot of web traffic when free. - The Times does very little investigative journalism of significance. - The Times has strong pretensions, as evidenced by its coverage of socialite weddings, etc. - In the buildup to the Iraq war it was the Times' sloppy fact checking that sold the war to many, many people who had been skeptical prior to reading its coverage. - The Times attack on the Pulse news reader turned what should have been superb publicity into a petty attack on a small startup that obviously loves the Times. For all its flaws, it's still a great paper, but far less great than it once was or than it could be if it had more sense and guts and had to fight harder to maintain its position. Banning a word like "tweet" suggests an annoying sort of editorial rectitude that is at least as unbecoming as any of the foibles mentioned above, especially in light of the Iraq war fact checking fiasco. We have wars going on and all sorts of corporate fraud and the Times is wasting ink (or pixels) on why it banned a silly sounding word?

pigbucket 16y ago
The paper should do better. But one of the things it tries to do well is language use, and one of the reasons it does it well is that it has people like Corbett working on the problem of what constitutes good writing and usage. Words matter, even if "tweet" is not a good example of why they matter. Corbett and his predecessors have done all kinds of interesting stuff, some of it fun, some educative, but some serious, serious especially when it comes to reporting on war: Do you call this group terrorists, or insurgents, or resistance fighters; do you call that group anti-Israeli, or humanitarian, or pro-Palestinian? We've taken this memo out of its native context and taken it as a sign of some deep problem at NYT in its relation to technology, but "tweet" is a drop in the ocean of language problems that Corbett deals with. Check out some of his public musings here: http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/author/philip-b-corbett/ http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/author/philip-b-corbett/. I see no reason why an institution as important as the New York Times should not do a whole lot better in the ways you suggest, and also continue to try to set some basic standards for writing.

grellas 16y ago

The problem with this memo is that it conflates the use of "tweet" as a noun (useful and precise) with its use as a verb (much too casual for formal use). I agree with the author as to the latter but not as to the former. There are some contexts in which a certain level of formality helps keep an elevated tone that suits the forum. I think the New York Times is one such forum. It has a long tradition of maintaining "standard English" and at least some significant portion of its reader base might be jarred should its reporters suddenly lapse into forms of expression that depart sharply from that standard. "Tweet," though, at least when used as a noun, is really what I would call a "term of art," that is, a form of expression that captures a range of attributes not easily otherwise expressed except in wordy or imprecise ways. Casual-sounding as it may be, it is the one word that describes perfectly the form of short message that one transmits to those to whom one is connected on the Twitter platform. Thus, in one word, it describes: 1. The type of platform on which the message was sent (Twitter). 2. The fact that is 140 or fewer characters and hence either a short phrase, single sentence or two, or other informal expression of thought about a subject (as opposed to any form of carefully developed argument or expositional form of expression). 3. The fact that it is sent originally to those who are "following" such the sender, who may be but likely are not intimate with the sender (Twitter being a very public platform). 4. The fact that such a message can easily be spread virally by those followers to others who are in turn "following" them or can be linked to from a wide variety of sources from all across the web. Given that the paper's own (highly skilled) writers had used it 18 times within just the past month confirms this. "Tweet" (used as a noun) is a good, solid word - precise, accurate, pithy, and almost certainly carries a meaning that is well known to anyone who knows what Twitter is. I don't think it has a good substitute that is not either wordy or imprecise compared to the word itself. That is why it is a useful term of art. For that reason, it makes no sense to dissuade use of "tweet" as a noun, and I think the memo author is plain wrong on this. I would side with him, though, when it comes to "tweet" as a verb (as in, "I will tweet you"). This is much too casual for a formal publication such as the times. There is of course nothing wrong as such with this verb, and the issue is strictly one of tone. But the author is right that, in terms of tone, the word is misplaced in this particular publication. Edit: point well taken, ismarc - a different rationale from that of the memo writer but a sound point about avoiding reader confusion, at least until the term acquires broader general usage.

alexandros 16y ago

There is a certain irony in claiming that '"tweet" has not yet achieved the status of standard English', and yet "it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections". Surely, the NYT considers itself a good sample of standard English usage?

Tichy 16y ago

"Tweet" is already on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweet So anybody reading the NYT could easily look that up, in case they lived under rock for the past three years.

Grinnmarr 16y ago

According to Dave Itzkoff, an employee and frequent contributor to the NYT, this is a hoax. http://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/15847765293 http://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/15847765293

donohoe 16y ago
Nope, not a hoax, but not a 'ban' either

sfphotoarts 16y ago

I presume ornithology articles are exempt from this.

est 16y ago

from the guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

stanleydrew 16y ago
Flag it then. Meta-comments like this aren't very useful.
steveklabnik 16y ago
from the guidelines > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

hristov 16y ago

Makes perfect sense to me. That will have additional advantages as it will allow the Times to weed out a lot of fluff pieces about who tweeted what.

T_S_ 16y ago

I am banning the phrase "reach out". Call or email me if you object. Tweeting is ok too, if I am following you (unlikely), but please don't reach out to me. edit grammar

siculars 16y ago

I seem to recall more than a few articles over the last decade on how best to refer to the internet, or web sites or email. The tip of the spear is always the smallest, but hardest point. There will always be some new communications medium that only a rarefied few use and understand before the rest of the world catches on. In that in-between time there is apathy, confusion and even resentment.

Mgreen 16y ago

Banned? FTA: “Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. Definitely not banned.