John Cusack tweets with his iPhone and, much like the characters he plays, his style is fast and loose. "I'm pretty new to it, and if there's a spell check on an iPhone, I can't find it," he said by telephone. "So I basically get in the general ballpark and tweet it."
Consequently, Mr. Cusack has birthed strange words like "breakfasy" and "hippocrite" and has given a more literary title to his new movie: "Hot Tub Tome Machine."
Most of his followers ignore the gaffes. But a vocal minority abuse him about it nonstop, telling the star that as much as they liked "The Sure Thing," his grammar and spelling sure stink. "If you're going to be political, maybe learn how to spell Pakistan, and all words in general," wrote one supposed fan.
"The vitriol was so intense that at first I didn't think they were serious," Mr. Cusack said. "Because, like, who would care?"
They do. A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people's tweets -- celebrities and nobodies alike. These are people who build their own algorithms to sniff out Twitter messages that are distasteful to them -- tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS -- and then send scolding notes to the offenders. They see themselves as the guardians of an emerging behavior code: Twetiquette. (Post your comments here)
"It would be kind of nice if people cleaned up their grammar a little bit and typed in lowercase, and made the Internet a little bit smarter," said one of them, Nate Fanaro, a 28-year-old computer programmer in Buffalo, whose Twitter handle is CapsCop.
Last October, Mr. Fanaro wrote a simple program that detects tweets written in capital letters and automatically sends one of several snappy responses, like "This isn't MySpace so maybe you should turn your caps lock off." So far, he has issued more than 130,000 of these helpful reminders, including at least 205 to one particular user, a woman in Singapore. (Oddly, with little effect.)
"Some people don't really understand that it's just not good Internet etiquette" to type in all capital letters, Mr. Fanaro said.
Yes, he and the other Twitter cops do get quite a backlash, much to their delight. Mr. Fanaro posts a phone number on his Twitter profile page, and his voice mail is full of death threats and foulmouthed rants. For laughs, he sometimes takes his phone to a bar and plays the messages for his friends.
Provoking an irate reaction seems to be largely the point. GrammarCop, one of several people who seem to exist on Twitter solely to copy-edit others, recently received a beatdown from the actress Kirstie Alley, to whom he had recommended the use of a plural verb form instead of a singular. "Are you high?" Ms. Alley wrote back. "You really just linger around waiting for people to use incorrect grammer? you needs a life." (One of Ms. Alley's people said that the actress was too busy to comment for this article.)
A life, indeed. While some of us may live to host weight-loss shows, others find solace in pedantry. Fans of the late journalist and linguist William Safire may recall his "Gotcha! Gang," readers who liked to point fingers at the occasional lapse in Mr. Safire's weekly language column for The New York Times Magazine. He once described them as "a hardy tribe obsessed with accuracy and a lust for catching error in others."
The same could be said of the Twitter gadflies, whose constant yipping at their victims gives a bit of an edge to the free-for-all dialogue on the site.
"There's always this sarcastic humor pervading Twitter, where people will see something that someone has posted quite innocently, and they'll respond to it in such a way that just is like a slap," said Lance Ulanoff, editor of PCMag.com and a frequent tweeter. "Then what's worse is that that gets re-tweeted, so now it's like you got a bunch of people standing around you, pointing and laughing."
Among the laughers and pointers is Jacob Morse, a 27-year-old user interface designer from Richardson, Tex. Last year, he and some friends started a Web site -- Tweeting Too Hard -- devoted to mocking self-important Twitter users. There, people can discuss fake-humble tweets like, "I gave my cleaning lady a raise today, even though she didn't ask, as my own little contribution to fighting the recession." Wrote one commenter: "Let's hope she was grateful enough to overlook the bionic condescension."
Each post on his site links to the Twitter account of the person who wrote it, helping her or him notice the ridicule. "There is something just inherently enjoyable about putting cocky people to shame," Mr. Morse said. (Hecklers take note: Mr. Morse recently brag-tweeted about having his picture taken for this article.)
Enforcing etiquette on Twitter is basically begging to be called an idiot, but those who do it don't seem to mind. "With Twitter particularly, the feedback is so intense and so immediate, it does something very particular to your ego that even the blogs don't," said Xeni Jardin, a partner in the blog site Boing Boing and a usual suspect on Twitter. "That feedback rush is like pouring plant food on weeds."
It's hard to tell, but the number of Twitter accounts devoted to pointing out other people's language foibles does seem to be growing. Among the more mentionable ones are Grammar Fail, Grammar Hero, Your Or Youre, Word Police and Spelling Police, which for a time fixed Español malo.
A user called Twenglish Police monitors Australian tweets, inserting himself into other people's conversations to offer advice like: " 'Funnest' is not a word. Even if Apple used it. You're welcome."
"I don't want to get them worked up," said Tom Voirol, who runs the Twenglish Police from Sydney. "I just want to point things out."
What is it about human nature that we seldom feel grateful for such guidance? Barbara Bailey, a 54-year-old Web developer from Littleton, Colo., runs a blog called Twitter Fail, where she mocks tweets that she considers stupid. She once made fun of a man who used multiple Twitter accounts to post the same things.
"He started calling all the phone numbers he could find that were associated with me, he started calling my clients, then he had some guy claiming to be his attorney call me," Ms. Bailey said. She promptly took down the post about him.
For his part, Mr. Cusack has refused to be silenced. In early April he issued an ultimatum, threatening to block from his account anyone who sniped at his spelling or grammar.
It didn't work. The people he blocked would return with new account names, "and they'd behave like cranky, obsessive trolls," Mr. Cusack said.
He has been trying a new strategy, he explained by e-mail: first, he spells things wrong on purpose to get the critics riled up, and then "I blockthem executioer style now with no warning!!"
Consequently, Mr. Cusack has birthed strange words like "breakfasy" and "hippocrite" and has given a more literary title to his new movie: "Hot Tub Tome Machine."
Most of his followers ignore the gaffes. But a vocal minority abuse him about it nonstop, telling the star that as much as they liked "The Sure Thing," his grammar and spelling sure stink. "If you're going to be political, maybe learn how to spell Pakistan, and all words in general," wrote one supposed fan.
"The vitriol was so intense that at first I didn't think they were serious," Mr. Cusack said. "Because, like, who would care?"
They do. A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people's tweets -- celebrities and nobodies alike. These are people who build their own algorithms to sniff out Twitter messages that are distasteful to them -- tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS -- and then send scolding notes to the offenders. They see themselves as the guardians of an emerging behavior code: Twetiquette. (Post your comments here)
"It would be kind of nice if people cleaned up their grammar a little bit and typed in lowercase, and made the Internet a little bit smarter," said one of them, Nate Fanaro, a 28-year-old computer programmer in Buffalo, whose Twitter handle is CapsCop.
Last October, Mr. Fanaro wrote a simple program that detects tweets written in capital letters and automatically sends one of several snappy responses, like "This isn't MySpace so maybe you should turn your caps lock off." So far, he has issued more than 130,000 of these helpful reminders, including at least 205 to one particular user, a woman in Singapore. (Oddly, with little effect.)
"Some people don't really understand that it's just not good Internet etiquette" to type in all capital letters, Mr. Fanaro said.
Yes, he and the other Twitter cops do get quite a backlash, much to their delight. Mr. Fanaro posts a phone number on his Twitter profile page, and his voice mail is full of death threats and foulmouthed rants. For laughs, he sometimes takes his phone to a bar and plays the messages for his friends.
Provoking an irate reaction seems to be largely the point. GrammarCop, one of several people who seem to exist on Twitter solely to copy-edit others, recently received a beatdown from the actress Kirstie Alley, to whom he had recommended the use of a plural verb form instead of a singular. "Are you high?" Ms. Alley wrote back. "You really just linger around waiting for people to use incorrect grammer? you needs a life." (One of Ms. Alley's people said that the actress was too busy to comment for this article.)
A life, indeed. While some of us may live to host weight-loss shows, others find solace in pedantry. Fans of the late journalist and linguist William Safire may recall his "Gotcha! Gang," readers who liked to point fingers at the occasional lapse in Mr. Safire's weekly language column for The New York Times Magazine. He once described them as "a hardy tribe obsessed with accuracy and a lust for catching error in others."
The same could be said of the Twitter gadflies, whose constant yipping at their victims gives a bit of an edge to the free-for-all dialogue on the site.
"There's always this sarcastic humor pervading Twitter, where people will see something that someone has posted quite innocently, and they'll respond to it in such a way that just is like a slap," said Lance Ulanoff, editor of PCMag.com and a frequent tweeter. "Then what's worse is that that gets re-tweeted, so now it's like you got a bunch of people standing around you, pointing and laughing."
Among the laughers and pointers is Jacob Morse, a 27-year-old user interface designer from Richardson, Tex. Last year, he and some friends started a Web site -- Tweeting Too Hard -- devoted to mocking self-important Twitter users. There, people can discuss fake-humble tweets like, "I gave my cleaning lady a raise today, even though she didn't ask, as my own little contribution to fighting the recession." Wrote one commenter: "Let's hope she was grateful enough to overlook the bionic condescension."
Each post on his site links to the Twitter account of the person who wrote it, helping her or him notice the ridicule. "There is something just inherently enjoyable about putting cocky people to shame," Mr. Morse said. (Hecklers take note: Mr. Morse recently brag-tweeted about having his picture taken for this article.)
Enforcing etiquette on Twitter is basically begging to be called an idiot, but those who do it don't seem to mind. "With Twitter particularly, the feedback is so intense and so immediate, it does something very particular to your ego that even the blogs don't," said Xeni Jardin, a partner in the blog site Boing Boing and a usual suspect on Twitter. "That feedback rush is like pouring plant food on weeds."
It's hard to tell, but the number of Twitter accounts devoted to pointing out other people's language foibles does seem to be growing. Among the more mentionable ones are Grammar Fail, Grammar Hero, Your Or Youre, Word Police and Spelling Police, which for a time fixed Español malo.
A user called Twenglish Police monitors Australian tweets, inserting himself into other people's conversations to offer advice like: " 'Funnest' is not a word. Even if Apple used it. You're welcome."
"I don't want to get them worked up," said Tom Voirol, who runs the Twenglish Police from Sydney. "I just want to point things out."
What is it about human nature that we seldom feel grateful for such guidance? Barbara Bailey, a 54-year-old Web developer from Littleton, Colo., runs a blog called Twitter Fail, where she mocks tweets that she considers stupid. She once made fun of a man who used multiple Twitter accounts to post the same things.
"He started calling all the phone numbers he could find that were associated with me, he started calling my clients, then he had some guy claiming to be his attorney call me," Ms. Bailey said. She promptly took down the post about him.
For his part, Mr. Cusack has refused to be silenced. In early April he issued an ultimatum, threatening to block from his account anyone who sniped at his spelling or grammar.
It didn't work. The people he blocked would return with new account names, "and they'd behave like cranky, obsessive trolls," Mr. Cusack said.
He has been trying a new strategy, he explained by e-mail: first, he spells things wrong on purpose to get the critics riled up, and then "I blockthem executioer style now with no warning!!"
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