I’m sorry to say it, but Twitter gives me the blues. Lots of behavior on social media in general makes me feel sort of sad, particularly the way we use these venues to show “the world” what we’re “all about.” There’s nothing like following someone you know in real life on Tumblr or Instagram to find out that you don’t like that person as much as you thought you did.
Lest you think that I think I’m immune to any of this, I don’t, and I’m not. I do, however, have a hearty fear of making an ass of myself, and since I’m not much for socializing to begin with I have avoided becoming deeply involved with most social networking websites. I am not now and never was on Facebook, for instance. For years that shit creeped me out, and now it just looks boring. I was also very late to the party on Twitter, tried it for half a year, then quickly became irritated and embarrassed by the puffed-up egos on that website—including my own—and deleted the account.
But there are a lot of useful resources on Twitter, at least for someone like me. I recently signed up for and started taking what looks to be an excellent certificate course on editing offered jointly by the American Copy Editors Society and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit that provides educational resources to journalists. The first class has directed me to a number of useful resources, including reliable ways to keep abreast of updates to style guides, such as following them on Twitter. The Associated Press style guide is on there; so is the Chicago Manual. @APStylebook even hosts live Q&A sessions via hashtag chats. Merriam-Webster has a lively presence there too. The dictionary tweets a word of the day, and regularly interacts with people by answering their questions and appreciating their nerdy puns.
Earlier this week I decided that since I’d like to make use of these resources, I should start a new Twitter account and use it only to access information like this. I’ll maintain a purely professional persona on the website, and not show off how clever or cool I am or get pulled into posting strident, smug commentary on political and social issues. I figured it would be easy for me to carve out an isolated space on there, since I’d only be following dictionaries, style guides, and other copy editors who tweet primarily about industry news and proofreading tips.
But I was wrong. At about 6:00 pm EST on Super Bowl Sunday, Merriam-Webster retweeted a post from one of its staff members, lexicographer Peter Sokolowski:
Then just two days ago, the dictionary tweeted that lookups of the word “impugn” were spiking, then posted this article about Senate Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell accusing Senator Elizabeth Warren of “impugn[ing] the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama,” Jeff Sessions, in the talk she gave to express her opposition to Sessions’ nomination to Attorney General. People understandably wanted to be sure they understood the meaning of impugn, which is, according to its entry in Merriam-Webster, “to oppose or attack as false or lacking integrity <impugned the defendant’s character>.” But the Senate rule that McConnell invoked to stop Warren from continuing to read from Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter about Sessions does not use that word; it uses the etymologically unrelated word “impute,” which means “to lay the responsibility or blame for, often falsely or unjustly.” I found this information useful, pertinent, and timely (and I couldn’t help but feel pleased that the person I view as being on the wrong side of this conversation, McConnell, had used the wrong word, like a fool). Later in the week, more light-heartedly and with an attitude of celebration, the dictionary tweeted about the new words it added this year, which include side-eye, face-palm, and the slang usage of the word shade—all fun, trendy things that got people talking and joking and sharing Paris is Burning memes.
I read all this, enjoyed it, and got caught up in thinking about which, if any of these, I would retweet (to find out you can have a look at my Twitter account, and please feel free to “follow” me on there). And then I had to scold myself. Of course I couldn’t use language, or even grammar and usage, as some sort of hideout from the real world. Language isn’t divorced from reality; it’s a reflection of it, a description of the world and everything in it—politics and ego included.
Indicative Mood 