Pure Thinking

Food for thought on a Friday

My wife showed me this video last week, very cool insight into social media and the future of communication.

-Geoff

ROFL, G2G, POS and BRB

Acronyms used in texting and instant messaging have finally made their way to the official AP Style Guide. Or, the AP Style Guide has official caught up with the rest of the world. Either way, if you are a journalist or in the PR industry, you live and die by the AP Style Guide. Every possible spelling, capitalization or grammar rule is in there. Or it used to be.

As social media has evolved, so has the language that we use to talk about it. Five years ago, tweet was the sound a bird made, not something that millions of respectable adults do daily. Things have changed and the AP Style Guide has been slow to adapt. We've been stuck in a gray area with little consensus among PR pros and journalists about how the terms should be used. Can fan and follow be both verbs and nouns?  Is it website or Web site? What is the proper usage of the terms trending, retweet and unfriend? Fortunately, for all of us AP Style geeks (I can think of several in our office), our burning questions have been answered with the official release of the new 2010 AP Style Guide.

The new AP Style Guide includes a special section on social media guidelines including 42 special entries on words such as app, blogs, wiki, etc. Finally, we have the official rules for using social media terms at least until tomorrow when a new term pops up. I don't know about you, but I will be getting my new AP Style Guide tomorrow (the online version of course, along with iTunes app so I can always have my trusty Guide with me).

For those of you that don't know, below are the definitions for the jumble of acronyms in the title:

ROFL: Rolling on the Floor Laughing

G2G: Got to Go

POS: Parent Over the Shoulder

BRB: Be Right Back

-Shannon

@stdanitz

We want a rematch

Two agencies and several egos were let loose in downtown Denver last Thursday to battle it out in the first annual Pure-Juice Cruiser Scavenger Hunt. Do you know where to find a gorilla in LoDo? Can you count the number of steps at the west side of the Capitol Building? Know which brew pub is Denver's oldest? Well, we all found out... violating a few traffic laws in the process.

While I wish I could end this post with a declaration of victory for team Pure, we went down to Juice, and we went down hard, with the "Red Team" finishing first, second and third.

I guess we can update the list of things Puritans do well:

Win Denver agency kickball

Scavenge for things on our bikes

Drink beer

In closing, a special thanks to hostesses of the hunt Ellen Blackburn and Karen Casler for organizing a fantastic ride and (in Pure's case) even better after-party BBQ.

And a 'congrats' goes out to Juice for taking the win. Enjoy your short lived victory, because in 361 days... we're showin' up to the 2nd Annual Cruiser Scavenger Hunt and it.is.on.