Updated: Facebook...Has Removed the "Is"

Updated: If you're a Facebook user you won't need to told that today, in a historic nod to the existence of both the past and the future, Facebook removed the "is". An informal survey (very informal...ok I looked at the status updates of my friends) shows that only a very small percentage of people are taking advantage of the new sentence construction, although there is much metacommentary ("Jackie hey, the 'is' is gone") and a few mistakes arising from habit {"Adolpho writing it all down") but most are staying with the "is". Time is will tell!

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I've just read on Mashable that Facebook has agreed to remove the mandatory "is" from status updates. This is something that has been bothering people about Facebook and that has been the source of a great deal of linguistic and stylistic controversy during the short but colourful history of Facebook, although I have to confess that personally I embrace the constraint.

The Mashable article says the "is" will be dropped "tonight" (published November 20, 2007), but here it is the 22nd and I still see the "is" on my page.

According to the Telegraph, Facebook-related blog allfacebook.com is the source of the news. The Telegraph also reports that no date has yet been given for the removal of the "is".

"Kate is...waiting."

It will be interesting to see a) if this is really true, b) what effect this has and c) whether people are going to be able to break the habit!