Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Comment on a comment...

MEDIA: I quickly received a comment on whether social media should be singular or plural.
Augustin said...
Social media can be treated as a collective noun, since the social media in question is all doing the same thing.
Thanks to Augustin for the comment. I understand the concept of the collective noun. Still, I have to admit that "the social media in question is..." makes me shiver. It sounds wrong to my inner "grammar meter."

Facebook and LinkedIn are social media. So are Ecademy and Ryze. The groups on Yahoo are a social medium. Twitter, YouTube and MySpace are social media. Social media seems plural to me, just as regular media (newspapers, TV, radio, the Internet, etc.) are plural.

I can see your point, Augustin, but I have trouble with social media "is."

WORD OF THE DAY: I believe Michael J. Fox said that members of the media were trying to spell erudite in the movie "The American President."

erudite –adjective
characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite discussion.
What I find interesting is the etymology of the word.
Etymology: Middle English erudit, from Latin eruditus, from past participle of erudire to instruct, from e- + rudis rude, ignorant
Rude and ignorant seem to be the opposite of erudite.

WORTH QUOTING: Here's an interesting quote on poetry from the Paris Review. 
"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."
Contact: Reach me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com.


(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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