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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Civilry in Public Discourse?

While searching for good hashtags today, I wanted to include something that connotes what I've been reading lately, and look for people with similar interests.   I've been following blogs on civil society, freedom of expression, democracy, government accountability, transparency, gov 2.0, patriotism... and kindness.

But that's way too many terms to include in a tweet, much less at the end of at tweet.

If one wants one's message re-tweeted, one should not use-up all 140 characters!

So, even within the 140-character limit, brevity is key.

So, as necessity is the mother of invention, I stumbled onto the new term "civilry" -- a portmanteau of "civility" and "chivalry."

As a hashtag, it has the advantage of containing the real word "civil" (suggesting the word "civility") and the sound of the word "chivalry."  But it has a noticeably incorrect spelling so that it stands-out (not overlooked as a typo or abbreviation or pidgin English).  With a hash sign in front of it (#civilry), it looks more "official," if there is such a thing when it comes to Twitter lingo.

Feel free to use the tag #civilry in your civil discourse, noble microblogging pursuits, and odd T-shirt sayings.

I really haven't studied the mechanics of a good hashtag or portmanteau, but it will be interesting to see if this one catches-on.  I welcome all feedback.  Cheers.

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