The press is cleared to Tweet.
“Twitter” is among more than 60 new entries in the 2009 Associated Press Stylebook released Thursday. This means that journalists can bandy the term around in their stories without sullying their credibility or offending the style police.
The AP publication – now in its 56th edition – is the bible of uniformity in word usage for the U.S. press, though most newspapers use individual guidelines and exceptions.
“The verb forms are to Twitter or to Tweet,” notes the advisory for Twitter, initially a noun referring to the online social-networking mode that limits communications to 140 characters or fewer, which typically shears off proper punctuation and spelling.
