AJ: I avoid energy drinks for the most part as they don’t seem to work very well. A good cup of coffee has far more effect – but I think I have indeed seen adverts for “Rockstar”. So many products following in the wake of the X-Factor (and its ilk), hoping to cash in on the desperation of young singing hopefuls!

Ken: I’m UK-based, as it says in my bio. Book publishing is an enormous subject and one with which there are people far more familiar than I. What would be a good starting point? Not sure – perhaps Anne could help you with a few resources – she generally has a big list and good advice!

Have you tried “Rockstar” energy drink! Based on your explanation rockstar (or rock star)
for energy drink make more sense.

AJ

I think (from your comment) that you took this post as a complaint about the language developing and changing. It was actually intended as just a quick thought about choosing terms carefully: for example, since you’d never heard the term, you could have a completely different idea to the one intended – which could be disastrous for the person using it. See what I mean?

That was it, really. Not at all deep! Oh, and yes – there’s definitely worse than Twitter: txtspeak…!

Re: Grammar Nazis – I actually don’t mind changes in the language, new words or even ebonics, txtspeak and bad grammar in a blog or where appropriate (games, quick notes, SMS texting, etc.). I admit to being a bit of an ass when it comes to “proper” published stuff, though, simply because it doesn’t take much more effort to get it right and mistakes make the publication look stupid.

I don’t know where you’re coming from spike. Myself, I’m a student of the classics. The decay of literature has been ongoing for several centuries. Even in my life time I saw it go from ‘magazine’ to ‘blog’ to ‘Twitter’. (Can it get worse than Twitter?) However, as an optimist I like to state that there was likely far more crap out there than most of us care to think – which has yellowed and crumbled away into dust as no one cared to preserve or reprint. But… if you really look into some of the original writings of artists around Shakespeare’s day, give or take a few centuries, and you’ll find that writers were not anal about spelling or grammar (instead of calling yourself a spelling or grammar Nazi, you go with spelling or grammar ass? I’m sure the grammar Jews would find it less offensive. Pardon my humor, no ill meant by it.). If you ever get an unedited version of works from that era, you’ll see what I mean. Thomas Wyatt, a favorite of mine, didn’t even spell his name consistently. I wondered at the time if that was related to the fact that English used to inflect nouns when it was closer to its Germanic roots on tense rather than verbs as it inherited many of its attributes from the French. I never found the answer to that question.