Tweeting

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk
 

I was recently persuaded to try Twitter after observing its use at the NLab Social Networks Conference, where a live feed of everyone’s tweets appeared on the main presentation screen throughout the event.  This could be used playfully (a message appearing behind presenter Steve Clayton read: “Steve is a vista pimp”, which later sparked some twitter interaction) or more meaningfully for people both within the conference theatre and those who were unable to attend, but could follow proceedings via Twitter.  We also discussed the way Twitter could be used as a “global pub” – a way of throwing questions out into the community and receiving “trusted” responses or generating debate.  It certainly got me curious about the Twitter-buzz…

 

As I have mentioned previously, I am an avid Facebook status-updater thanks to my iPhone, so never really saw the point in using Twitter as well.  However, in the name of experimentation, I signed up and quickly discovered how easy it was to integrate Twitter with both my Facebook profile and my website, so my updates automatically appear everywhere I could possibly wish.  It was extremely easy and suddenly I started to understand why Twitter is a much better interaction tool than the Facebook status update alone.  Excellent!  Couldn’t be happier!

 

But there was one slight snag with this brilliance.  The snag was a question of grammar:  how does one construct a tweet that makes grammatical sense in all of the different contexts in which it appears?

 

I might tweet:  ”Wondering how to use grammar!”

Most mobile phones (including the iPhone) would automatically capitalise the first letter of the text message.  

As a tweet, it would be delivered to my followers in this format:

custardether: Wondering how to use grammar!

This would appear in Facebook as:

Kirsty Wondering how to use grammar!

On my website as:

Twitter Update:

• Wondering about grammar!

 

To capitalise, or not to capitalise?  And what about the ubiquitous “is” – subject of much debate within Facebook?  It is implicit in the context of Twitter, as the service is based on the premise that you are answering the question: “what are you doing?”.  But as soon as you take the answer (your tweet) out of that context, it can require an “is” to make grammatical sense.  The app integrating Twitter with Facebook has recently stopped automatically inserting “…is Twittering:” when adding a tweet to one’s Facebook status, compounding the problem.

 

In reality, this is not a big issue.  As online readers we are use to ellipsis and a general relaxation in punctuation conventions.  After all, the essential message (”what am I doing?” or “what is my current status”) is conveyed in all circumstances – just not as elegantly as one might wish.  

 

As with all grammatical questions, it comes down to style.  What we consider hard-and-fast rules-that-have-existed-forever today are merely popular stylistic conventions which will evolve in time to form new hard-and-fast rules, which people will also believe have existed forever.  It will be interesting to see how those developing the applications responsible for integrating the various status update mechanisms handle the grammatical issue create a seamless integration – or whether we as readers simply adapt to accommodate the clunkiness of the sentence structures created.

 

I think I will now go and take refuge within the pages of Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves, where there is safety for my inner stickler.  I will keep tweeting though!

what does your email address say about you?

Imagine that you are REALLY angry about something.

You choose to send an email of complaint to the relevant company or authority, expressing your frustrations (eloquently, of course!).

You hit send with a great flourish and sit back, bristling with indignation, to wait for the response.

When this response comes, it is quite cool and snide… not what you might expect, under the circumstances.

Do you:

a) write back in outrage?
or
b) check which email account you used to send your initial complaint?

It is quite an amazing thing how many people will write emails in which they wish to be taken seriously, but give little or no thought to the construction of the email address they are using. I mean… could YOU take any of the following email address components seriously?

lovingforaliving@… (screams: “I’m on the game”)
jelly_kitty@… (what?!)
ali_is_a_superhero@… (really?)
purpleypink_fluffyhippy@… (ok…)

Maybe people assume that no-one looks at their email address anymore, in this age of digital address books and “reply” buttons. These email addresses are great for corresponding with friends, who probably *get* the joke, but in any professional setting they can give out totally the wrong idea.

Whilst exclaiming over a particularly cring-worthy address today (wobblybits@…) I commented that someone should do a piece of research studying the ways in which people choose and apply their email addresses in the variety of cultural settings that now exist on t’internet. As the average number of email addresses per user increases, will a social code develop that prohibits these addresses being paraded in the more serious areas of the world? Are people developing personal rules for their personal email accounts or even considering their email address as part of their online image? Or are the culprits here those who only have the one freemail address and have to scramble around for the bit of paper it is scribbled on any time it needs to be recounted?

I may seem a little flippant here – but what underlies is, I believe, an important social point. There is obviously a lot of language play going on in the construction of such addresses, which in itself would be interesting to study. Also, in all the hype surrounding other net applications, the simple email runs the risk of taken for granted and seems to be little considered in terms of its social representation of a person online.

Does anyone really study these things? If not, they jolly well should! I can see a happy evening of curiosity-browsing ahead of me, in pursuit of such a dedicated social researcher so I can send them cake…