With 500 million users and 500 tweets a day, the social networking site Twitter has changed the way we communicate. It also changes the way we write.

This year alone there were more than 100 Twitter-based studies. One study found that tweets often use words and spellings  that are consistent with — and unique to — the user’s region, reflecting local accents and terminology.

Jacob Eistenstein, who was one of the researchers, says the team is continuing its research to find out how new words, terms and acronyms move between cities.

• Time: What Twitter Says to Linguists
• New Scientist: Twitter shows language evolves in cities

Guest

• Jacob Eisenstein, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. He was part of the research team that produced the study.

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