By John Robert Ladd

This morning, John discovered Talk in Third Person Day, thanks to Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day. He thinks that this little Internet holiday is a great idea, though he wishes their site and blog contained more information. He wanted to point this out so that all of you could celebrate along with him, but he also wanted to hint at a larger point about language on the web.

The Internet space has made every one of us [them?] writers. Every day that we hop onto our favorite social networks, forums, and blogs, we participate in an act of composition. It's no surprise, then, that word lovers and English geeks flock to the Internet in droves. Think about Cory Doctorow, Wil Wheaton, and Randall Munroe of xkcd just for starters.

Because nearly everything on the web is text-based, playing with language is perhaps the largest part of what we're all doing here. Naturally, interesting language memes and holidays have sprung up everywhere online. The closest analog to Ti3P is of course Talk Like a Pirate Day. Though the origin of the quirky September 19th holiday may not be the Internet, its consistently growing popularity is certainly due to the web. [John should mention there would be a Talk Like a Ninja Day as well, but ninjas are known for their all-encompassing silence.]

There are also a lot of web-based movements designed to change or adjust our way of speaking. Two of John's favorites are Oxt Weekend and Twenty Not 2000. Both attempt to give the English language a little more efficiency by adjusting our speaking and writing habits ever so slightly.

Lastly, John would be remiss if he didn't mention Lolcats, that mother of all Internet memes. The captioned cats derive their humor almost entirely from their misuse of language. This phenomenon has become so popular that more than a few of its terms and phrases ['I can haz' and 'Nom Nom Nom'] have started to enter the popular lexicon.

Sometimes we don't notice how profound an effect language has on our everyday lives, but the Internet provides us with a plethora of fun, geeky ways to appreciate the words we use. John certainly thinks this is a great idea, and he'd love to know of other online language phenomena you find interesting. Let him know via a comment, Facebook, or Twitter. Of special interest to him would be Internet word memes that are in languages other than English; he'd love to do a follow-up piece on international word holidays and memes. John hopes you enjoy the rest of Talk in Third Person Day!

John Robert Ladd is the founder and editor of Paradise Tossed. He's a writer, poetry student, and confirmed geek living in Alexandria, VA. The most notable objects of his geekery include formal poems, postmodern plays, crossword puzzles, the Internet, and dead languages. He is also the cohost of the PT Podcast, and the one who tweets. Literally and figuratively, he wears many hats.

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