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Times Editor Bans Use of "tweet" Word, But Less Worried About Grammatical Errors

By Ian Brockwell  

New York Times editor Phil Corbett has apparently told his writers not to use the word "tweet" in their articles, saying it is "unacceptable"

He claims "tweet" has not yet achieved the status of standard English, saying "And standard English is what we should use in news articles."

I couldn't agree more, but "tweet" is a widely used (and accepted) term for placing a message on Twitter, and Mr. Corbett accepts that this will become as commonplace a word as e-mail in the future.

Perhaps what Phil Corbett (and the editors of many other well known publications) should be more concerned about, is the rapidly increasing grammatical errors that are slipping through the net.

Most News suppliers employ proof-readers to check for errors, but it is clear that they are either overworked, or lack the skills required for the job.

As many are already aware, there are some important differences between American English and "English" English. Not just in the way some words are spelt (like Colour/Color for example), but in grammatical areas as well.

It is common practice (in the US) to treat all company names as "singular", regardless of whether their titles have a singular sounding name or not. In America it would be correct to say "Continental Airlines IS (not ARE) a large company"

Traditionally (in Britain), it has always been acceptable to use IS or ARE for plural sounding companies, depending on the choice of the user. However, Britain has slowly been adopting certain American grammar styles, but has become somewhat confused on how and when these should be applied.

Sadly, many assume that this grammatical rule applies to all words that have a plural meaning and we are often seeing things like "They is..." or "The people is...". Such errors are not helped by the corrections offered on Microsoft Word, which some people wrongly believe are always correct!

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Whilst there are clear rules (in the UK and US) for how a company is viewed (singular or plural), some things have not changed. Unfortunately, some writers (and proof-readers) are uncertain of these facts.

For most objects, there is a difference between singular and plural. Whilst you can say "The star IS shining", you must use "The stars ARE shining" if you are talking about more than one. This may seem like a very obvious point to make, but it is an error that is appearing more and more.

Forget about words like "Tweet" Mr. Corbett, and concentrate more on protecting the more basic areas of the English Language!