A couple trends in online language have caught my eye in the last year, and I find them interesting enough to blog about:

1. Syncope: writers are finding it easier and easier to write things like srsly, in which all the vowels are removed; or o rly? in which the important vowels are removed.
2. Noun Desuffixation: You see this a lot: preso instead of presentation; convo instead of conversation; aggro instead of aggravation.  This continues a trend that I think has been going on a long time; even pre-text-message, writers came up with info instead of information; invite instead of invitation; prep instead of preparation.  But the prevalence of thumb-writing has made this trend even sharper and the evolution of acceptable / understandable writing even faster.
3. Hashing: this was born out of a need to track threads on Twitter.  People will “hash” – or prefix a certain word with the “#” character – when they want to call attention to a category, topic, theme, or if they just want special emphasis.  #win and #fail are so common on Twitter that no one even bats an eye anymore. People feel free to make up hashtags whenever they want to start a conversation; many examples can be found at hashtags.org.  Question for my readers: should this third trend be called “hashing” or “hashtagging” or something else?

Do you see any other net-inspired writing trends that are worth calling out?  Bad grammar and poor spelling don’t count, as they are neither novel nor interesting.

First rule of Twitter etiquette: there is no such thing.  In my opinion, if you don’t like something that someone is doing, you can unfollow them anytime you want.

Having said that, what are some of the new themes in Twitter etiquette that are worth commenting on?  Let’s take a tour.

#hashtags: Hashtags are those words prefixed by the pound sign (“#”, also known a hash sign) that you see in tweetstreams.  They supposedly provide context and metadata to tweets, but in practice, I see them used mostly for emphasis, and that’s how I use them.  It’s slightly painful to see well-meaning twitterati try to coordinate hashtags for an event when everyone has already started using different ones.

Blog posts: Normally people are pretty good about noting that they are linking to one of their own posts by prefixing their tweet with [blog] or [post] or something similar.  Bloggers who repeatedly spam their own posts get blocked, period.  Twitter in my mind is a lifestreaming app, not a one-way push mechanism.

Retweets: Twitter recently fucked up the retweet function on their website, and not only don’t allow you to edit tweets for length, or add your own prefix comment.  Luckily most other tools still allow you retweet and  keep your sanity.  A couple tricky issues with retweets:

• How much editing is too much?
• If an item has been retweeted before it got to you, do you have to keep the whole chain of retweeters?

I have no hard-and-fast expectation for either.  If you want to edit the retweet, go for it.  If you want to chop out multiple retweeters, go for it.  Try your best to keep original attribution, but don’t go all haywire applying severe rules to a fluid medium.

Grammar: A lot of twitter grammarians have already checked themselves in to inpatient psych wards, so this problem is less of an issue than it used to be.  Twitter grammar sucks.  People type quickly, they type while driving, they type while roller skating backwards and locking lips with their significant others.  Bad grammar happens.  Even if bad grammar chafes (as it does me), you can learn to deal with it.  People are messy. So is Twitter.

Rickrolling:  Rickrolling is like heavy drinking; every now and then it can be a fun break.  Do it every day and people start to shun you.

Protected Updates: My favorite phrase on this question is “protected updates make baby Jesus cry.”  Don’t protect your updates and still pretend that you’re “doing” Twitter.  Get over your fear of the Wayback Machine, live your life authentically, and don’t worry what some future boss/friend/spouse might think about something you tweeted back in 2008.

Inanity: Sometimes tweets make no sense.  In my opinion, that’s part of the fun of Twitter; you get to see people as they really are, without a lot of filtering and polishing and pre-planning and run-this-by-my-publicist checking.  Tweeps who are too polished are boring, IMHO.  On the other hand, if you like the  corporate flavors, feel free to unfollow someone who tweets about the junk that their cat just threw up.

Anything to add?  Things you love or hate about Twitter?  Write it in the comments!

Want Twitter to index your #tagname hashes? Do you even know what this is? In Twitter, when you tweet

Come see the news about #xidey on my blog!

Hashtags will only index the “#xidey” tag and let you see what the buzz is at http://hashtags.org/tag/xidey.

You have to type:

follow @hashtags

In order for your hash tags to start getting indexed.