Talk:Sound bite

WTF
"...someone with authority or the average "man on the street" says something..."

Whoever wrote this fails at writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.212.68 (talk) 03:20, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI, ✅ -- You will not find 'street' with a search. -- AstroU (talk) 19:04, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move
I noticed in the history of this article, it seems like the question remains as to whether soundbite should be one word or two words, so I decided to make this formal and request the move to 2 words. Doing a quick Google search shows the 2 word version appearing in most of the results. Also, dictionary.com shows the proper definition when it it 2 words (it does not recognize the 1 word version). Sjsharktank (talk) 09:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. Clayhalliwell (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Something's missing here...
Someone needs to explain the fundamental difference (if any) between a "sound bite" and an entry from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear (or read) what others have to say. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 21:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Sound bites versus quotable quotes
I've removed the following section of quotes, as they are not really examples of sound bites. They are simply quotes that made headlines. -- 41.177.9.15 (talk) 07:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Historical sound bites
Classic examples of sound bites include Ronald Reagan's demand that "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" in reference to the increasing social pressure to remove the Berlin Wall. In this context, the well-delivered sound bite serves as a cultural icon that others are not likely to know about.

More sound bites include:
 * "The only thing we have to fear is - fear itself." (the most famous phrase in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address in 1933)
 * "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy....." (the opening phrase of Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech declaring war on Japan the day after Pearl Harbor had been attacked)
 * "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." (the most famous phrase in John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address in 1961)
 * "Ich bin ein Berliner" John F. Kennedy at 26. June 1963.
 * "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Neil Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission
 * "Houston, we've had a problem." (said by James A. Lovell in the Apollo XIII mission)
 * "Read my lips: no new taxes", delivered by United States presidential candidate George H. W. Bush
 * "Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." said by Lloyd Bentsen as a retort to Dan Quayle's comparison of himself to Jack Kennedy in terms of political experience
 * "I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders" &mdash; Tony Blair following the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Blair had just commented that "A day like today, it's not a day for soundbites: we can leave those at home".

Sound bite or Sound byte?
The article is titled "sound bite", but the article starts out "in film and broadcasting, a sound byte is a very short piece..."

Now we know that 'byte' is a pun on 'bite', but was coined to refer to a small piece of information (8 bits). This is in the computer realm.

But, it now seems that there is an anomaly here. Is it a "sound byte" (as stated in the body of the article), or a "sound bite" (as stated in the title of the article)?

I do not know. I searched for 'sound byte' and found 'sound bite' in the title but 'sound byte' in the text.

I am more of a tech type than a media type, I'll let you all figure out how to fix this anomaly. But, whatever you do, make sure that someone who searches for either tag ('sound bite' or 'sound byte') will find it!! Bill Jefferys (talk) 02:14, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Addition...I'm guessing that in the media it is 'bite'; so if changes are to be made to the article, to change 'byte' to 'bite', there should be a link to the 'byte' article (with appropriate discussion of the pun) to explain the relationship and etymology. Bill Jefferys (talk) 02:27, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

This article's introductory sentence is now telling readers that "sound-byte" is an incorrect spelling. I have two problems with this. First, we should be describing actual established use, not enforcing future use and disparaging past use. English words aren't (only) for writing software, but for communicating with other humans, so flexibility is desirable. Second, consider the following post from 1990. What is a 'sound byte'?. Even that far back, they were debating this. Actual usage of the time according to the same archive appeared to give a slight edge to "sound bite". I lived in the '80s when this term first started becoming popular, and it was at least as common to spell it "sound-byte" as it was "sound bite". But while there were certainly sound-bytes that pre-date the use of the term by decades, it's clearly the popularity of simple user-programmable computers like the CBM PET making their way into school classrooms (among other places) in the late '70s and early '80s, which introduced people to the idea of "byte". I remember this was discussed on TV (but obviously I don't remember the shows). The term was derived from the computer concept of byte, generally the smallest unit of information that could be read or written. If you wanted to send 2 bits, rather than send them in 2 bytes, you'd compress them into a single byte and unpack it later. Similarly a sound-byte was the smallest (usually political) message that could be clearly spoken to the public, conveying a key message. (It has nothing whatsoever to do with storing sounds digitally in bytes, or storing a single byte of sound.) As this Eggcorn web page notes, Lou Marinoff shared my recollection of how this term came about, on page 9 of his 2001 book Philosophical Practice. "Sound-bite" is his "pet homonymic peeve" because it is "nonsense". If we are going to enforce usage, I recommend you read the entire paragraph, available in Amazon's preview pages of the book. 24.57.210.141 (talk) 05:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

To add a bit more, the resource cited to show that "sound-byte" is incorrect is the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style (a non-American publication). They, in turn cite this letter to the L.A. Times which uses "sound bytes". Apparently Oxford thinks they know better than the L.A. Times how Americans speak. Go figure. Based on this, I will restore the previous text (i.e. "alternatively written as"). 24.57.210.141 (talk) 06:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Mark Twain what? why?
"Before the actual term "sound bite" had been coined, Mark Twain described the concept as "a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense." " So, wait.. before the term existed it was already defined? That doesn't make sense. Either Mark Twain defined the term "sound bite", or he defined something else which later became "sound bite". As it is now, the sentence is confusing and seems to only serve to include Mark Twain. --98.70.54.127 (talk) 23:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

American-centred viewpoint
Parts of this article (but not the introduction, in fairness) prevent an overwhelmingly American viewpoint of the subject matter. I think it should be expanded to include examples and critique from around the world. Iain (talk) 14:22, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Combine these pages?
Sound bite Catchphrase Slogan and Buzzword are variations on a theme. Why not group them together in one article? Crawiki (talk) 14:14, 13 April 2019 (UTC)