commenter vs. commentator

[Joel S. Berson]

A commentator is an authoritative, reputable, prestigious commenter.

Joel

At 6/21/2010 11:15 AM, Judy Prince wrote:

>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:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > 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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
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