The Awl reports that the standards editor at the New York Times has banned the word “Tweet” from its pages.

Wrote NYT editor Phil Corbett,

Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.

…One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don’t; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to “tweets” or “tweeting.” Someday, “tweet” may be as common as “e-mail.” Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and “tweet” may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn’t help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)

I think I have a man-crush on Mr. Corbett.

Funnily enough, the move comes just as TIME has won a “Mirror Award” (yeah, I don’t know it either) from the Syracuse journalism school for Steven Johnson’s article, “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.”

This happened even though the answer to that thesis appears to be, “Not in the slightest…”

I wonder if the fact that the Syracuse j-school, which is probably in desperate need of cash, is honoring Twitter founder Biz Stone at the awards luncheon might have had anything to do with the pick?

These awards are always ridiculous, of course. Case in point: They were presented by Katie Couric and Arianna Huffington, both of whom have many things going for them but neither of whom is, well, a print journalist…..