Spelling in advertising is often nonstandard, and deliberately so. Unusual spelling is a way for brands to attract attention—though sometimes it just seems like poor skill at spelling. You also have energetic guardians of branding who patrol the marketplace trying to make sure no one imposes unwanted rules on a corporate or product name. These watchdogs try to enforce practices like:

– Insisting on a hyphen (as in Jell-o), or on its absence.
– Writing a compound word as two words (Bar Keeper’s Friend.
– Mixing upper and lower case (HarperCollins, MasterCard).
– Skipping an initial capital letter (iPhone).
– Using punctuation or special characters (E.ON, Yum!).
– Spelling with all caps (IKEA).

In Finnish, brand practice can violate the standard rules of our language. For example, we change word endings based on their role in a sentence. We’d write “IKEAssa, IKEAsta, IKEAan” for “in IKEA, from IKEA, to IKEA,” but the company’s brand guidelines say its name should not be inflected in this way.

We’re at the point where being nonstandard is becoming standard. Maybe clever marketers will try to stand out by following the rules.

You run into all kinds of problems when popularizing officialese. One such challenge stems from the fact that much official writing is based on the law. Such texts frequently follow the same presentation mode as the law itself. A common method is to divide instructions or explanations into sections, complete with the section symbol ( § ). Why should you avoid this? Average readers will feel this legal format distant and difficult to read. Specialized symbols and markings [ like § 1.401(a)(4)-1 ] create that distance; readers don’t see the symbols, or the excessive attention to multilevel numbering, in other kinds of writing. In everyday prose, writers may use chapter numbers, but also include standard numbering, headings and subheadings, or simply paragraphing. All these are tools to organize the content in a way that’s accessible to the reader. Could it be that the use of section symbols and other official hieroglyphics is not so much for sequence or organization, but to emphasize the authority of the law? Asserting that authority often contradicts any desire to increase readability and comprehension. If we want our audience to read, understand and follow official instructions, we shouldn’t start by marking boundaries with section symbols.

Last week, the the hot topic in Finnish Twitter has been #digitalistgate. The discussion in short went like this: in his tweet, Antti K. called stuff shared with #digitalist hashtag as nonsense articles. Viille T. who is hosting the hashtag replied with underrating “you are some wordpress star from nowhere”, “with your 300 followers” and “you seem to be quite simple.” Verbal cross word might have ended here, unless Ville T. threatened to call to Antti K’s boss. The consultant’s communication seemed completely out of control, even though he is supposed to be a professional. What went wrong?

The net was supposed to democratize the debate. Now we know that is not necessarily the case. However, we must at least try to take on an equal attitude towards debaters. The claims should be refuted with arguments not on grounds of person or amount of followers.

Marketing and brand building has long been a increasing nuisance on Twitter. It seems that behind this particular gate is also a heavy brand guarding. Fortunately, Twitter conversations and hashtags can not be private property.

On the other hand, in social media you shouldn’t be oversensitive. Not everyone will see things from the same point of view or take you as seriously as you self. Criticism comes, and some comments should just be ignored. In this case, though, the online expert just keeps digging away. It”s a grave mistake.

On Saturday, nonfiction writers again filled the hall at Helsinki’s House of Science to discuss and reflect on their social media presence. Tuija Aaltostarted things off by asking the writers to think about the outcomes they wanted from social media: effective marketing, greater book sales, increased networking or something else? After defining the goal, it is easier to choose the appropriate channels. Elina Lappalainen, who won a Tieto-Finlandia Prize a couple of years ago, dropped by to tell her own social media story. Even as she starts writing a new book, she’s already planning social media activities for it. During the writing process, she picks up images and stories that she can share later. She publishes these items bit by bit, increasing the pace as the book comes out. Lappalainen has also experimented with paid advertising on Facebook and Twitter: spending 100 euros led to 25 deals. In my presentation, I focused on Twitter; I think it is the most useful social media tool for experts and nonfiction writers. Throughout the seminar it was clear that while the speakers had diverse attitudes towards marketing, no one wanted to restrict social media only to advertising. Success for a writer requires more: an authentic presence and versatile content sharing.

13At the Finnish Consulting Group Forum last week, the Language Police presented the Top Ten List for bureaucratic jargon, and attendees voted for the most outstanding example. Finalists consisted of two government job offers, a government proposal, an invitation to “a vendor negotiation dialogue session”, and a call for EU project proposals. This year, the defining characteristic for the five jargon candidates was repetition:

“Experimenting professionals act as experimentation implementers.”

“The contract experiment is expected to produce an innovative contract.”

“Seeking a Project Manager for a Project Data Management Project, which takes place in the Information Management Unit of the Government Management Unit.”

This last announcement, with its loopy search for a project manager in a project data management project, greatly appealed to the judges, and is the nearly unanimous choice for Jargon of the Year. Many thanks both to those who submitted candidates and those who participated in the voting.

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The Word of the Week is going on holiday and will return in August. A beautiful summer to all language lovers!

In the public sector, participants in training courses regularly ask me what they’re permitted to say in social media. Since freedom of speech applies to public-sector employees as well, I don’t quite understand the problem. An event last week made the issue clearer for me.

On Twitter, an official shared a link to someone’s blog post that sarcastically criticized a decision made by the city. The official’s boss forwarded a message from the boss’s boss, which told the tweeter to “carefully consider” deleting the link. The reasoning? “The mayor doesn’t like it,” and officials need to be loyal to their employer.

An official, however, should be loyal not only to his employer but also to his field of expertise; in fact, the public organization hired him with taxpayer money specifically for that expertise. When “loyalty” means “support every management decision,” the staff is muzzled and the public lacks the benefit of their professional opinion. There must be the some right to comment on public decisions.

The word loyal comes from the Latin lex ’law’. Does a requirement for loyalty have the effect of a law that unduly limits freedom of speech?

This week, Twitter confirmed that it is making four significant changes. Two of them sound good and two seem questionable. First, the good ones.

Photos, videos, polls and quotes will no longer count against the 140-character limit, although links still will. The downside of this change for us language people is that Twitter will probably become even more packed with images.

Another change also saves characters: a reply to a tweet will not include the original person’s name; that will appear above the reply. When user names don’t eat up characters, multi-sided discussions will be easier. Currently these are restricted to just a few words at a time because user names consume most of the 140 characters.

A more questionable change allows users to retweet and quote their own tweets. This will likely increase the amount of annoying self-promotion, which people tolerate much less than senders believe.

It also doesn’t seem like an improvement that bilateral messages are shown to all followers. Today, when a tweet starts with a username, it appears only on the sender’s and recipient’s timeline. Post-change, a two-sided message, if it is not a reply, will be visible to anyone who follows the sender. This is going to increase unnecessary load on most people’s timeline.

I’m sick and tired of unnecessary abstractions. Why do we say that “man is greedy”, when we’re talking about ourselves? “The media reports” in plain language means “I saw something about this in the morning paper.” On TV panels, talking heads keep claiming that social media is all about hate speech, but they’re obsessed with the comment sections of tabloids. And all too often in a newspaper story the “many” who demand something are the writer and two of his friends.

Administrative language is often a jungle of abstract processes and measures, and it’s difficult to figure out which real world issues they really refer to. A dental clinic is “oral health care”, courses are “skills development”, and a playschool is “early childhood education service”. With this approach, everything melts and blends: authors, children, patients, athletes, artists, choirs, students and seniors will dissolve into multi-service centers. Planners can easily cut, reduce, transfer and “rightsize” on paper, because the decisions don’t directly affect people, only “service delivery.”

Let’s keep our language close to the real world. The Language Police razor* cuts away unnecessary abstraction and generalization.

* As with Occam’s more famous blade, the main principle of the razor is that we should always choose the simplest representation available.

SomeTime is an open, self-organized event that brings active Finnish social media users together to brainstorm new ideas, tools and uses. SomeTime began in 2010, and each year it draws two to three hundred participants, both in person and online. This year, SomeTime was held at Tampere University of Technology, right next to my office. So it was a great opportunity to go and feel the atmosphere, which you can’t experience fully through remote access.

The highlight of the morning was Jari Jussila’s presentation about the measurement of emotions in the digital environment. Jussila’s group aims to understand the user’s emotional path in, for example, an online store. What brings a sense of control, enthusiasm? What generates positivity or negativity? And what kind of feelings are likely to get retweeted on Twitter? On the basis of a small amount of research, it would seem that the tweets containing amazement and joy spread most effectively.

After Jussila, Jaana-Piia Mäkiniemi examined feelings in the world of teaching under the title ”Technology in education – enthusiasm or irritation?” Especially during busy periods, schools should not simply thrust new technology onto teachers, because schools typically lack the necessary technical or other support. With careful preparation, however, new technology can reduce teacher’s stress by updating teaching methods and thus avoiding frustration.

The afternoon was reserved for workshops. There were presentations about schools in the future, online parenthood, Periscope, Buffer, and OneNote, which I’m taking full advantage of thanks to Outi Lammi’s recommendation.

Young people online: digital natives, or digitally naive? Two Israeli researchers who’ve analyzed digital literacy believe it has five components: photo-visual skill, reproduction skill, hyperlinking skill, informational skill, and socio-emotional skill. Photo-visual skill deals with the understanding of visual cues. Reproduction skill helps a person create something new out of existing material. Hyperlink skills construct meaning from independent, non-linear chunks of information. Informational skill helps evaluate sources critically, and socio-emotional skill makes it possible to connect via social networks.

The researchers measured these skills in high schoolers, university students, and adults. The younger people were better at visual interpretation and hyperlinking; the adults were stronger in reproduction and informational skills. As for socio-emotional skill, the results were contradictory and need further study.

These five components help answer the question of whether, in the digital world, people are natives or naive. It turns out that, whether young or old, we are both.