Hashtag Learn to Copy-edit
Hashtag Learn to Proofread
We all know what a hashtag looks like, but no one could have guessed that the word hashtag would be Oxford University Press’s children’s word of the year for 2015.
Children aged between five and thirteen submitted 120,000 entries for the BBC’s 500 word short story competition.
It’s not just that children use the hashtag when tweeting. We all do. The point is that the word itself has become an important part of their vocabulary. In doing so it has mutated and become the word of choice when they want to emphasise or add meaning. I suppose it has achieved the status of a punctuation mark, a sort of extended exclamation or italic emphasis. It can change meaning in quite subtle ways.
Other words have joined hashtag in the popularity stakes: Instagram, emoji and Snapchat, for example.
Others like email, Facebook and mobile are in decline, and television is receding while phone leaps ahead. Yes! Dear old phone has made a comeback at the expense of mobile. (They’ll be reinstating the apostrophe before it if we blink.)
For editors and proofreaders this is all fascinating, of course. No one can enjoy editing or learning to edit without keeping up with trends like these. If you resist or resent change to the English language you are unlikely to enjoy editorial work. Our editorial skills courses teach tolerance. These children will soon be writing the books which we shall be editing. There will be no place for sniffy disdain. Fashions come and go, of course. Hashtag may have a brief life. Who knows? But if you are the type of person who is still basking in the glow of using email, beware. The tectonic language plates and the technology which currently shifts them are moving fast!
The results of the competition will be announced on the Radio 2 Chris Evans Show on Friday 29th May. Good luck to all the hashtaggers and all entrants, whatever words they used.