Words, Wrds, wdz
Impact of the technology on Language
LOL, OMG, ♥ Added To The Oxford English Dictionary
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/24/lol-omg-oxford-english-dictionary_n_840229.html
“The stalwart bastion of language, the
Oxford English Dictionary, will now include ♥ and LOL as real words
worthy of etymological recording. Other words added include the formidable
OMG. As they say, 'words" like
these "are strongly associated with the language of electronic communications," and have entered the
mainstream because of how easy they are to use.”
Neologisms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism
A neologism (pron.:
/niːˈɒlədʒɪzəm/; from Greek νέο- (néo-), meaning "new", and λόγος (lógos), meaning
"speech, utterance") is a newly coined term, word, or phrase, that may be in the process of entering common use,
but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language.[1] Neologisms are often directly attributable to a
specific person, publication, period, or event.
Impact of the technology on Creative Writing
From Hemingway to Twitterature: The Short and Shorter of It| by
Michael Rudin
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0014.213/--from-hemingway-to-twitterature-the-short-andshorter-of-it?rgn=main;view=fulltext
With every status update and tweet, the millions of individuals on social-networking sites are more than staying
connected—they are reading, writing, editing, distilling, and interpreting the written word more than any
generation in history. In doing so, they are helping develop Fiction 2.0: a fascinating marriage of character-count
restrictions and the network effect that has created a new category of short-form content and narrative
experimentation.
Nano fiction by Andrew Looney
http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/Nanofiction.html
One of my favourite kinds of fiction, both to create and to consume, is the very short story. A few years ago I
picked up a slim volume of such stories, edited by Jerome Stern, entitled Micro Fiction, in which each story was
no more than 250 words. More recently, I got another volume of super short stories that takes the challenge one
step further, limiting each story to exactly 55 words. This book, entitled The World's Shortest Stories, edited by
Steve Moss, sets down the rules for 55 word stories as such: each story must contain the following four elements:
1.) a setting, 2.) one or more characters, 3.) conflict, and 4.) resolution. Plus of course, the whole thing can only
be 55 words long, not counting the title, which must be no more than 7 words long.
The Cell Phone Novel (Keitai
Shousetsu)
http://meghanward.com/blog/2009/11/09/the-cell-phonenovel/
The big question is: Is a novel a cell phone novel if it’s written
on a computer? After one Japanese writer’s thumbnail
started cutting into the flesh of her thumb, she took to the
computer, where “her vocabulary’s gotten richer and her
sentences have also grown longer” according to the New York
Times. Her parents would be proud.
Ring! Ring! Ring! In Japan, Novelists Find a New Medium
Budding Scribes Peck Their Tales on Cell phones; Ms. Nakamura's Hurt Pinkie
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119074882854738970.html?mod=Entertainment
TOKYO -- When Satomi Nakamura uses her cell phone, she has to be extra careful to take frequent breaks.
That's because she isn't just chatting. The 22-year-old homemaker has recently finished writing a 200-page novel
titled "To Love You Again" entirely on her tiny cell phone screen, using her right thumb to tap the keys and her
pinkie to hold the phone steady. She got so carried away last month that she broke a blood vessel on her right
little finger.
"PCs might be easier to type on, but I've had a cell phone since I was in sixth grade, so it's easier for me to use,"
says Ms. Nakamura, who has written eight novels on her little phone. More than 2,000 readers followed her latest
story, about childhood sweethearts who reunite in high school, as she updated it every day on an Internet site.
For Japan's cell phone novelists, proof of success is in the
print
One teenager who wrote a three-volume novel on her phone has gone on to sell more than 110,000
paperback copies, grossing more than $611,000 in sales.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/09/world/la-fg-japan-phone-novel9-2010feb09
She likes Care Bears, doesn't wear makeup yet, and took her nom de plume from a character in the Disney
classic "Bambi."
And last year, 15-year-old "Bunny" became one of Japan's top authors of a genre called keitai -- cell phone -novels.
After getting its start as a tale told on tiny cellular screens, her three-volume novel "Wolf Boy x Natural Girl" has
gone on to sell more than 110,000 paperback copies since its release in May
Twitter Fiction
(see also Micro fiction, cell phone fiction, flash fiction, nanoism, and hint fiction)
Twitter Fiction (@twitterfiction) is fiction short
enough to fit into a Tweet, i.e. up to 140
characters long.
Flash Fiction: Very short fiction. Definitions
vary, but less than 1,000 words and can be as
short as 100 words or even less.
www.dailywritingtips.com/33-writingterms-you-should-know/
Nanoism
http://nanoism.net/
Nanoism (edited by Ben White / @midnightstories) is an online publication for twitter-fiction: stories of up to 140
characters. Shorter than traditional flash fiction, it’s both a challenge to write and quick as a blink to read. Call it
nanofiction, microfiction, twiction, twisters, or tweetfic—it doesn’t matter: It’s the perfect art form for the bleeding
edge of the internet revolution.
Twitter Fiction done right
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/11/29/writer_elliott_holt_wins_us_over_with_her_twitter_fi
ction.html
People have been writing fiction on Twitter for a while now, but the results have largely been
uninspiring. Consider “Black Box,” a short story by Jennifer Egan that The New Yorker tweeted out, one tweet per
hour, for 10 nights in May. Egan is a terrific writer, and it was exciting that The New Yorker was experimenting
with the form—but the result was a delicate literary soufflé that crumbled in on itself. Egan’s beautifully composed
tweets were like foreign travellers who had no idea where they’d turned up.
Hintfiction
@hintfiction
”Hintfiction stories are no more than 25
words long. Robert Swartwood was
inspired by Ernest Hemingway's possibly
apocryphal six-word story—"For Sale:
baby shoes, never worn"—to foster the
writing of these incredibly short-short
stories. He termed them "hint fiction" because the few chosen words suggest a larger, more complex chain of
events. Spare and evocative, these stories prove that a brilliantly honed narrative can be as startling and powerful
as a story of traditional length”. He has written a book (available on Amazon) with collected works in this style
from well-known authors. Example …
CURE
Triumphant, Dr Masuyo held the frail child.
After years, he finally had a cure. Outside,
the sun warmed Hiroshima.
And then he saw the flash.
by: Kevin Hosey
See an animation of this at http://vimeo.com/50502899
(New Yorker) This week in fiction: Jennifer Egan
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/this-week-in-fiction-jennifer-egan.html
Jennifer Egan’s story in the New Yorker, titled “Black Box,” was tweeted in
instalments at @NYerFiction.
An interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Jennifer Egan about her twitter novel
‘Black Box’.
Impact of the technology on Workplace texts
The New Résumé: It's 140 Characters
Some Recruiters, Job Seekers Turn to Twitter
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323820304578412741852687994.html
Twitter is becoming the new job board. It is also becoming the new résumé.
Fed up with traditional recruiting sites and floods of irrelevant résumés, some recruiters are turning to the social
network to post jobs, hunt for candidates and research applicants.
Guide to E-Mail & the Internet in the Workplace by Susan E Gindin
http://www.info-law.com/guide.html#email
The problems underlying e-mail use are numerous. For example, the medium is treated so informally that people
tend to write e-mail messages without much thought.
ToneCheck
Write Better Email
http://tonecheck.com/?__lsa=485c-7172
ToneCheck allows you to do a quick once over check of
your message to prevent you from accidentally saying
something that you might regret. Now completely free,
we encourage you to download and start taking control
over the tone in your email.