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John Posada laments the poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation
practices of the young in email and wonders if this is the general
trend in where our written language is going in the next generation.
(or something like that)
John,
It's not just the young whose writing habits and results are less
formal in email than in other forms of written communication. Read this
list--and it's made up of practicing writers--and you will find that
our email constructions are less formal (I hope!) than the work we do
on the job.
I think, but can't prove, that we are evolving a new, shorthand form of
written English for emails and web communications. But I think that
like the differences between spoken language dialects vs. the more
formal spoken language, this difference won't spill over into the
formal written language.
People are amazingly inventive with language. Email is a form of rapid
communication (I would guess that the actual writing of letters is
greatly increased because of email), but it is not considered as formal
as a 'real' letter or an essay or a technical manual. There are plenty
of linguistic studies, if memory serves, that show that speakers of
English can shift between less formal, dialectical forms and the more
formal "Queen's English" (or whatever you want to call it). I suspect
we'll soon have studies that say the same thing about email and IMs vs.
more formal written English.
Interesting topic, though. I'll enjoy following this thread.
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