The power of brevity

The Global Language Monitor has declared the word 'Twitter' the top word of 2009, according to IT Pro. This is in a top ten that features words as diverse as Obama and Vampire and is based on a global survey of words used by English language speakers.

If you're wondering how this is worked out, languagemonitor.com explains that GLM uses a Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), which it describes as "...the proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet, now including blogs and social media. The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity."

The top ten (I'm sure you'll be interested to know) looks like this:

1. Twitter — The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters

2. Obama — The word stem transforms into scores of new words like ObamaCare

3. H1N1 — The formal (and politically correct) name for Swine Flu

4. Stimulus — The $800 billion aid package meant to help mend the US economy

5. Vampire — Vampires are very much en vogue, now the symbol of unrequited love

6. 2.0 — The 2.0 suffix is attached to the next generation of everything

7. Deficit — Lessons from history are dire warnings here

8. Hadron — Ephemeral particles subject to collision in the Large Hadron Collider

9. Healthcare — The direction of which is the subject of intense debate in the US

10. Transparency — Elusive goal for which many governments are striving

If this survey is to be believed (it can't of course track everyday speech, which may contain quite different words), it says a lot about how the power of micro-blogging, as opposed to just social networking. Note, Facebook and other sites that fall under the same social networking umbrella as Twitter don't feature here.

Twitter's popularity seems to arise from its simplicity - as yet it isn't cluttered with adverts, photos and all the other paraphernalia that dominate Facebook and the like. Its main function is sharing thoughts and links (to other sites, articles, photos etc.) in no more than 140 characters. Despite such a tight restriction, it continues to be incredibly popular. Somehow people like the discpline. It may not have exceeded facebook yet in terms of users, but the fact that people are talking about it shows what a hot topic it's continued to be.

Arguably, the popularity of Twitter's enforced brevity reflects an increasing intolerance of irrelevance and waffle. With so much going on in our lives, quite often we simply don't have the time to read long emails and weighty attachments. Twitter says: "Tell me what you want to say as quickly as you can." and we do. Of course with so many links to articles, the truth is that we're still taking the time to read things that interest us, we just don't need to wade through paragraphs of unnecessary explanation to find out if it's of interest in the first place.

Whether Twitter will continue to discipline us remains to be seen and I predict that sooner or later the powers that be won't be able to help themselves and will start introducing advertising features and other peripheries that add little to the medium.

I only hope that this trend towards succinct forms of communication continues. That people use it for their emails, their web copy, their mailshots and other forms of advertising. Maybe one day we'll stop using words to baffle, confuse and over-complicate and see simple, straightforward communication as the way forward. I sincerely hope so.