New York Times writers have been warned not to use the word 'tweet'.
Twitter has become a global phenomenon, gaining another 20m
users this month
With the use of twitter continuing to grow, words like tweet and twittering are increasingly coming into everyday use.
But New York Times editor Phil Corbett says it is unacceptable.
He sent a memo to his writers telling them not to use the T-word, which he calls "inherently silly".
In the memo, obtained by The Awl website, Mr Corbett said: "Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, 'tweet' has not yet achieved the status of standard English.
"And standard English is what we should use in news articles."
The word tweet has appeared 18 times in New York Times articles in the past month, prompting Mr Corbett to put his foot down.
While he accepts it could become as commonplace a word as e-mail in the future, he has also banned his staff from using other jargon and buzzwords.
He said: "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."
Other commonly-used social media slang words:
Google - The search engine
Lol - Laugh out loud
Vlog - A blog that contains video material
BFF - Best friends forever
Unfriend - To stop following someone on a social networking website
Like - To show you like someone's comment or photo on Facebook
Tweetup - To use Twitter to organise meeting up
Hashtag - Used to denote a topic on Twitter
@ Reply - The @ symbol is used to reply to a Twitter user
Newsfeed - The latest news in chronological order
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Twitter has become a global phenomenon, gaining another 20m
users this month
With the use of twitter continuing to grow, words like tweet and twittering are increasingly coming into everyday use.
But New York Times editor Phil Corbett says it is unacceptable.
He sent a memo to his writers telling them not to use the T-word, which he calls "inherently silly".
In the memo, obtained by The Awl website, Mr Corbett said: "Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, 'tweet' has not yet achieved the status of standard English.
"And standard English is what we should use in news articles."
The word tweet has appeared 18 times in New York Times articles in the past month, prompting Mr Corbett to put his foot down.
While he accepts it could become as commonplace a word as e-mail in the future, he has also banned his staff from using other jargon and buzzwords.
He said: "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."
Other commonly-used social media slang words:
Google - The search engine
Lol - Laugh out loud
Vlog - A blog that contains video material
BFF - Best friends forever
Unfriend - To stop following someone on a social networking website
Like - To show you like someone's comment or photo on Facebook
Tweetup - To use Twitter to organise meeting up
Hashtag - Used to denote a topic on Twitter
@ Reply - The @ symbol is used to reply to a Twitter user
Newsfeed - The latest news in chronological order
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