Interesting factoids from a study being conducted by the Oxford University Press regarding Twitter and language usage: it is a hotbed for new word creation; hyper-abbreviations are rampant; participles ending in “ing” are popular; tweeters would much rather talk about the future than the past; intensives and strong adjectives densely populate; and, one of the most popular words on Twitter is, well “Twitter.”

OUP has been examining approximately 1.5 million tweets since January in an effort to explore Twitter’s impact. Read a synopsis of results to date here. Such language-tracking is not new: OUP already performs such studies in other media, such as newspapers, magazines and blogs. However, Twitter’s inherent length limitation has Tweeters going to new lengths to get their points across. Want more data? Check out the facts and numbers here.

Hat tip for both papers to Resource Shelf.