Legal Writing

You may "Twitter" or "Tweet" now

By Pam_Nelson

The Associated Press Stylebook has been updated for 2009. The style guide, used by media organizations throughout the country, has a new entry for Twitter, an online system for distributing messages. The AP says that posting a message on Twitter is to Twitter or to Tweet. That has been the common usage for a few years now, so the AP is catching up.

The stylebook also has a new entry on text messaging/instant messaging that translates common terms and symbols such as BFF (best friend forever) and NSFW (not safe for work). The stylebook accepts text, texting and texted as the verb forms for sending text messages. This probably won't sit well with some noun-to-verb hardliners. The AP still doesn't say anything about friend and Facebook as verbs.

Read the AP's press release for more news about the updated stylebook.

Full post as published by Triangle Grammar Guide on June 15, 2009 (boomark / email).