There are times when those who are prescriptive (and pompous) about language end up looking really stupid. Here's a case in point: Phil Corbett, the New York Times Standards Editor, the guy charged with establishing acceptable linguistic and journalist ethics at The Gray Lady, sent out a memo to Times staffers last week in which he rendered the word Tweet, in the context of referring to the 140 character posts sent to the Twitter micro blogging service, as verbotten. The memo was leaked to the blog The Awl, so we have it to parse, in all its glory. In the memo, Corbett instructs:

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.

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. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.

I note, for the curious, that tweet entered English, according to the OED, "In 1864," and is etymologically associated onomatopoetically or imitatively with bird songs. It is not a "neologism." Nor, given the number of users on Twitter, and the thousands of instances of Tweet in the context of Twitter in consumer publications, is a jargon.

I further note that once the developers chose to call the product Twitter instead of Stat.us, the idea of a singing (or tweeting) bird as the branding icon, the idea of calling a message a Tweet is fairly obvious. Now, where Corbett starts to go really really wrong is in the latter part of his memo:

Of course, new technology terms sprout and spread faster than ever. And we don't want to seem paleolithic. But we favor established usage and ordinary words over the latest jargon or buzzwords.

One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don't; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to "tweets" or "tweeting." Someday, "tweet" may be as common as "e-mail." Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and "tweet" may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn't help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)

There are several things to note about this. First, Corbett's objections aside, when the software company named Twitter named its product Twitter, Mr. Corbett, whatever his editorial acumen, does not get to decide that the NYT will call it Caledonia. Nor does Mr. Corbett get to decide how to name parts of the application's GUI or feature set. Twitter calls its 140 character messages Tweets. Regarding his personal objections to the word, principally that "Someday, "tweet" may be as common as "e-mail." Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and "tweet" may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn't help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)" I note that no less an authority on linguistic change than the OED finds Tweet as appropriate suffix, and has added the meaning of Tweet in the context of Twitter to its database. Regarding his reference to "e-mail," I note that style and usage manuals, as well as dictionaries, list email or e-mail as acceptable, that most typesetters drop the hyphen for obvious reasons, and that increasingly, email is gaining ascendency over e-mail. Thus is the nature of hyphenated compounds in English.

The nature of a Standards editor is to be prescriptive, but it is the last part of Mr. Corbett's memo that moves from daft, and into linguistic incompetence:

"Tweet" may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. But let's look for deft, English alternatives: use Twitter, post to or on Twitter, write on Twitter, a Twitter message, a Twitter update. Or, once you've established that Twitter is the medium, simply use "say" or "write."

Yes, by all means, let's indulge our selves in multiple unnecessary words, and the catachresis of using "say" for a textual medium, instead of using the simple four-letter word tweet that does double-duty as a noun and a verb, one of the particular beauties of English.