commenter vs. commentator

[Judy Prince]

Hi, Amy, thank you for raising this up-to-the-second discussion.

Help me understand your distinction between the two word uses:  " . .
. the author and editors probably chose to use "commenter" because of the
difference between posting discrete comments to a number of stories as
opposed to creating a unified commentary."

Thanks,

Judy

On 21 June 2010 14:42, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> Subject:      commenter vs. commentator
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On a social list of mine recently a lot of folks revealed their language
> peeves, many of which were standard peever fodder (utilize vs. use, try
> and vs. try to, etc.), and which I responded to with excerpts from MWDEU
> and Huddleston & Pullum's Students Intro. One of the peeves was
> "commentator."
>
> So I noticed a use of "commenter" vs. "commentator" in a Boston Globe
> Magazine article yesterday. It was about heavy users of newspaper
> discussion boards or the comment function of online newspaper articles.
>
> "Occasionally, he'll commit the common commenter sin of weighing in on
> an article without having read it. . . . But, overall, he plays by the
> rules, works hard at this commenter job of his, and, in a way serves his
> community." -- Neil Swidey, "Two Cents in the Digital Age," Boston Globe
> Magazine, 20 June 2010, p. 20.
>
> I'm probably reading too much into this semantically, but the author and
> editors probably chose to use "commenter" because of the difference
> between posting discrete comments to a number of stories as opposed to
> creating a unified commentary.
>
> I apologize if there's already stuff about this in the archives.
>
> ---Amy West
>
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