In reading Kathleen Parker's colum, she mentioned a word I've not seen, charticle. Here is a blog discussion of it, and here are some more images. Google has about 80,000 citations for the word, though I realize that often doesn't mean anything. Have you heard of it? Any other examples? I guess I don't see the difference from a charticle and what I'd call a chart.

The Wikipedia entry (link) explains: "a combination of text, images and graphics that takes the place of a full article". It cites this article. It's a portmanteau word: chart plus article I've never heard it before.

USA Today is full of charticles, I guess, but I'd never read or heard the word until today.

Wordmatic

See also Word Spy for some citations.

It may be a new word, but it certainly isn't a new concept. "Charticles" have been around at least since I have. I've just called them charts. I entered one in the fair many years ago.

So if a "charticle" is a short article containing charts, presumably a short article containing pictures is a "particle".

Or maybe not.

Yes, portmanteaus seem to proliferate like acronyms do. While I don't mind an catchy acronym once in awhile or a necessary portmanteau, I get annoyed by too many. We are trying to market one of our initiatives, so our PR department is looking for an acronym; once that's found, they come up with words that fit. I always think it should be done the other way around.

Charticle was also a Word of the Week over at Fritinancy which includes a YouTube clip.

Interesting, though I found the YouTube clip a little lame.