Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone

Ant writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting look at the current standards of writing and the general decline of spelling and grammar in today's "comic book generation." The author blames many of the problems on instant or near-instant communications stating that the slang developed is essentially eroding our ability to formulate coherent thoughts in writing when called upon to do so.

Comments

They don't realise language changes.

[Saven Marek]

What they don't realise is language changes. every generation gets this and when it happens someone will come up and say literacy is going down. George orwell even did it in 1940, said there were problems, said there were people writing bad english, said they wouldn't be able to communicate soon. Well look at what we have here, a world still functioning nearly 70 years later. Also, a roman once said the same thing or a greek. That the young people of today are a generation that look down on the world and are showing no moral principels or showing problems with language and spelling and all the hoo haa he could drag up. And this was BC.

I think these people are old thinkers stuck in a new world where communication has changed and any seventy year old would tell you they find it hard to communicate with youth but no 20 year old ever will, and it's the 20 year olds who are the future. Always.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[Pantero Blanco]

If the language used by a culture begins to be less capable of expressing intricate thoughts and emotions, it's not a change for the better. A simple language is the mark of a simple culture, which was Orwell's point.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[gordo3000]

Just as you said, language is a form of communication. Therefore, there is a time and a place for any branch for a given language. I see the problem as having a great number of people who lack the ability to articulately communicate an idea. but I don't think that is anyway limited to this generation.

of course, this man just seems to be complaining about the new method of communication. It used to be if you wanted to write someone a letter, it would take days or weeks to arrive and therefore, you took appropriate caution in how you presented your ideas. Those days are over.

Email and blogs do not in anyway replace great and creative writing, but are an addition to the communication tools we have. Just because more people can now express themselves to a large audience through writing doesn't mean standards have dropped, it just means that anyone can particpate without having judgement first passed by an editor.

Most blogs I read are filled with mindless drivel. But I do not judge them on the same scale as a book or newspaper so I have no reason to believe those blogs are a fundamental attack on good writing skills. These people never had them and their euivalents 30 years ago just went unpublished.

Please forgive any errors in this post as I have hurt my left hand and find typing relatively difficult.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[pomo monster]

"Their" language is every bit as capable of expressing intricate thoughts and emotions--maybe not to you, an outsider perplexed by MySpace and flummoxed by AIM, but certainly to the people who use these services day in and day out. Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it simple.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[schon]

What they don't realise is language changes.

No, they realize it just fine.

What *you* don't realize is that they're not talking about the language changing, but that it's changing too quickly, and for the worse.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[welcher]

He realises this very well. You are basically calling the guy old and ignoring his argument, apparently not even reading the article. From the article:

Apologists will argue that language isn't static, that it's ever-changing and evolving. That's true. Language does change. Idiomatic English is the product of centuries of social and cultural infusion, a fact that gives modern-day English much of its color and flair. But when change does violence to the accepted standards of the king's English and takes the mother tongue into the realm of the unfathomable, as does almost all jargon coming out of the technology and business worlds, it's our job as keepers of the grail to drive it back into the dark little hole from whence it came. Just because things always change, it doesn't make all change good.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[CDLI]

So what, you know exactly what I meant anyway.

That's the problem, though. The entire point of writing (well, at least this form of writing; obviously, things like novels and poetry are a different story) is to express what you mean clearly and precisely so that people can understand you. The more you throw words that are sort of the ones you wanted out, with botched grammar that may be a little confusing but doesn't obfuscate everything, and rely on your reader to "know exactly what you mean," the more you're inviting frustrating and misinterpretation. Your reader shouldn't have to spend his or her time trying to figure out what you're saying; that time could be better spent *thinking* about what you're saying instead.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[Anonymous Coward]

well yes and no, I think the point more was there's always been doomsayers pontificating on how some recent trend is going to be the demise of us all, but things always seem to turn out ok anyways

the real question is are there fuckups that we can't turn back from? or will we able to turn it around if things start getting so bad it actually has real world impacts (beyond offending the sensibilities of the older generation)

is a slow decline in older grammar/spelling standards going to result in an unrecoverable state?

in other words, history seems to show us that things that don't really matter eventually fall by the wayside, things that do stick around

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[uradu]

> So what, you know exactly what I meant anyway.

Does he? Perhaps in this case, because the thoughts you were trying to express were so simple. But given that sampling of your writing skills I have absolutely no doubt that you would crash and burn miserably when asked to write anything more complex, such as required in a business setting. Yes, the world does go on, but it goes on DESPITE people such as yourself, not BECAUSE of you. Thankfully there are still sufficient numbers of people who can express themselves to each other to carry on meaningful social and scientific interaction.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[IamTheRealMike]

Incidentally, am I the only one who can't quite figure out if the Wired article is satire or not? Does anybody seriously use the phrase "the Kings English" anymore?

If the language used by a culture begins to be less capable of expressing intricate thoughts and emotions, it's not a change for the better.

Right, but is that really happening? Fact is, English has a metric ton of crap in it that just kind of accumulated over the years. Many of its spellings and rules are baroque, and as time goes by I'd expect people to take simplifying shortcuts. Insisting on correctness just because seems worthless to me, as it implies that English is somehow perfect and canonical. If the meaning and nuances are still clear then why not simplify?

I don't see any evidence in the Wired polemic that the changes are for the worse. Shortening words or phrases as the language adapts to realtime text based communication is no big deal, the meaning is preserved and only the syntax has changed. I don't see any evidence that jargon is inherantly bad - the site he links to considers "email" to be a geek jargon word. All the words there refer to some specific, concrete thing and are useful as a result. Just because he doesn't understand them doesn't make them bad.

I'm also not convinced that writing standards are worse because of technology. I know my standards of English have improved as the result of writing things online (yes, here too!). If it weren't for the 'net then I would write far less than I do currently. Just because some people have a poor standard of English shouldn't be blamed on the tools, rather, blame the fact that English is such a crappy language.

A simple language is the mark of a simple culture, which was Orwell's point.

Not necessarily. See Lojban for an example of a very expressive yet simple language.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[kamochan]

"Dark" doesn't mean dumb, it means unknown.

If only it were so. The period saw the rise of monotheistic cults, destruction of priceless scientific works from the antiquity, violence and bloodshed. It is true that less literary works remain of this period, because the said cults decided to burn and rape books, as well as severely censor (as in, flay, draw, quarter, burn at the stake) authors of new works.

Calling the Dark Ages "dumb" may not be right, but neither is it "unknown" particularly descriptive. We know well enough why literacy (and some argue, civilization) crumbled during the second half of the first millennia.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, well, I was typing in a rare moment of political correctness.

One of my personal favorites was his speech about gynaecologists, and how they should be free to "spread their love for women across this great land of ours." I mean, this man goes way beyond simple foot-in-mouth disorder.

I think I'd like to sneak into the MiB control room for a few minutes, to see if GWB is up on their big board of resident space aliens. I would think he probably is.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[Metex]

is to express what you mean clearly and precisely so that people can understand you.

True however usually when we write something we try to create something that a small subset of people can understand. The one thing you forgot to add to this sentance is that the choice of audiance is getting smaller and smaller.

Historians write diffrently(choice of words, style of argument, tense ect.) then buissnessmen. Which is diffrent then scientist. It is just a basic fact of life. This thing annoys the hell out of me especially in science.

imaginary number? Well use an i... wait no I am an EE major lets use a j... but I am communicating with a math major.... damn wtf do I use? Or my all time favorite hey P is for power... actually p is for power if I am in EE... wait no Q with a dot over it is power if I am a thermo engineer... the uglyness of it all

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[Kadin2048]

The problem is that, by not bothering to follow standardized grammatical and spelling rules, a writer offloads the work of discerning the meaning of their statement onto the reader, instead of making it (relatively) clear and unambiguous.

It's laziness, pure and simple, on the part of the writer.

Spelling and grammar weren't standardized just for fun, or as part of some greater conspiracy by the Man to stifle your creativity, but because it makes text a lot easier to read than if everyone makes up their own rules. A reader shouldn't have to go over your writing more than once, trying to figure out what the hell you meant, and that's often what happens when you don't bother to even sort out which word to use.

The fact that a reader can understand you, doesn't mean that you're not being an arrogant and lazy writer, by making them work for what ought to be unambiguous and clear.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[Allahades]

Why does Tony Long start with the Comic book generation? Look at all the bad things that have happened to English since the 11th century! Sloppy writers have stopped using the letter /ð/ and have replaced it with such barbarities as /th/. English's accusative case has been wantonly abandoned except for in a handful of words ('whom,' 'him'-- where the /m/ is a vestigular inflection). Yes, back in the good old days, everyone wrote good, proper English, like this:

Fæder ure u e eart on heofonum; Si in nama gehalgod to becume in rice gewure ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum and ne gelæd u us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele solice.

Seriously, all languages change. People don't like to hear this, but it's true. If the written language doesn't keep up, then the vernacular starts to look less and less like the official written language. Written English is already several steps removed from spoken English (for example, all those silent /e/'s used to be pronounced). Someday, inevitably, spoken English will evolve into something so different from today's English that people will need glosses and/or a translation to read this Slashdot thread, just like we can't read old English or some Middle English without aid.

Re:They don't realise language changes.

[shellbeach]

Rubbish. If that were true you wouldn't use English, you'd use mathematics, or a computer language.

No, you'd use a language that most people understood.

English and just about every language in the world are by their very nature imprecise, open to multiple interpretations, and deeply entrenched in the culture of the day.

And a writer with a decent knowledge of a language will use these imprecisions to their advantage - the true beauty of language lies in the fact that a sentence may have many different meanings, depending on the context.

wrong

[insertwackynamehere]

there is always paranoia about "declining communication skills." At the same time there are always contradicting studies showing how language skills are actually increasing. Langauge and usage is always being analyzed way too much.. language is what it is. It is a method of communicating thoughts and ideas with others. As long as we understand each other there is nothing "wrong" and we are devolving or whatever these people seem to think. language exists because we created it for our benefit. People who can't accept that language evolves and branches off for different purposes are close-minded and ignorant to reality.

The abuse of language

[Tet]

I couldn't agree more. However, it's not just a case of me getting frustrated at the apparent lack of schooling of the people with whom I'm interacting. Nor is it just a case of language evolving. No, it's reaching the point where I'm genuinely struggling to understand what people are saying. As an example, I see an increasing number of people writing "no" when they mean "know". Since my brain is conditioned to associate a completely different meaning to the word "no", I have to do a double take before I can work out what they meant. When combined with a total absence of punctuation, I'm left wondering how the generation of today manage to communicate with each other at all, let alone with others.

Re:The abuse of language

[Clueless Moron]

Baloney.

I read books from the 1800's and 1900's regularly, and while the language may sometimes seem a bit stilted and quirky I have never found a case where they have done something as stupid and evil as use an incorrect homophone just because it was shorter to type.

What you're suggesting means that Google's principle "Do No Evil" could mean "Do Know Evil". Or maybe it means "Do Know e-Ville"?

Spelling matters. I'm tired of cryptic email that is so full of typos, misspellings and mangled grammar that it could mean ten different things.

Its teh intarweb

[inverselimit]

As more and more of the reading I do comes from blogs, comments, and other web-based, unedited communications, I find myself making more and more errors. These are spelling and grammar and sound-alike (their vs there) mistakes that I would never have made years ago, when most of my exposure to written language came from carefully vetted print. A downside of the immediacy of the Internet is that there is little time or inclination to edit and double-check. The resulting degeneration of the language is noticeable. I don't know how to reverse it, but it is pretty embarassing when I make such basic, I-should-know-better mistakes. And I cringe when I see them creeping into more formal communications (signs, etc) as well.

What Comic Book Generation?

[Penguinoflight]

The generation of young people who are currently ruining spelling and grammar rules are children of the comic book generation, if not grandchildren. Slangs develop for a reason, but this reason must be with the communication of other people. A better explanation of forming slangs is the increasing disconnection between the older generation and younger generation. The disconnect stems from many things including broken families, fewer job opporutities for teenagers, and the increasing age of professionalism. Some people simply decide that the extra wait is not worthwhile, and adolecents work to communicate with their undereducated peers. You see this phenomenon in some of the most prominent hobbies, such as car repair/performance modification, and in video game console repair/modification.

Sometimes parents need to understand that they give their children advice, AND an environment. The child may listen to advice, but will not be able to avoid paying attention to their environment. The environment in this case has nothing to do with comic books however.

A call for further reflection

[wedgegeck]

What this gentleman seems to overlook is that there was never any past period where literacy was widespread and all the world's (and by the world, I of course mean Western Europe) inhabitants were essayists and poets? Did I somehow miss the era of an entire civilization of Donnes and Popes?

Perhaps the gentleman should reflect on the possibility that grammar has never been a high priority for the masses. Perhaps he should consider that more people are now literate than ever before. Perhaps he should take a look inside a few graduate English programs in America, and tell me about the high standards upheld there.

The problem is consistency

[Nichotin]

I do not have a problem with the language undergoing natural evolution. The issue is that some ways of speaking / writing gets allowed, which makes the language less consistent and full of things that mean the same. Being Norwegian, I have seen my language getting raped by youngsters who appearantly do not care that their sloppy use of the language gives their sentence two or three different interpretations. It is the old "Hang him not, wait until I come" vs. "Hang him, not wait until I come" (Ok, this thing does not sound that good in English, as it is a common Norwegian expamle.)

Re:The problem is consistency

[archen]

I think that's the nature of a language where general usage has a very limited vocabulary. My wife learned English as her second language and often relates about how difficult it is to learn because it has so many words, but admits that it's nice because you can say EXACTLY what you mean. As our education system declines, people find it harder and harder to express themselves. So they end up using words that are similar, but not necessarily the same. The result is a blurring of meanings, which directly leads to very vague ideas in the language. As people adapt this language it becomes difficult to really say what you mean, so you end up with ridiculous redundant concepts like "one-of-a-kind uniqueness", because people have lost the clarity in using the words correctly in the first place.

Re:I Blame Webster

[starling]

ITYM 'loose'. Oh, and I think your shift key's busted :p

Actually, I'm not convinced that the spelling and grammar is any worse these days so much as there are more people writing who wouldn't have in earlier times. Plus, English is a living language in a constant state of flux; there never really was a single correct set of rules.

I suppose I could RTFA, but that would be cheating ...

good thing too

[nickgrieve]

I could be said that more people are using the written word for communications now than ever before. And don't get too hung up on spelling. Before the dictionary words were a lot more fluid than they are even now. Even Shakespeare was found to spell his own name different ways... are we going to say he had trouble putting his thoughts down on paper in a coherant manner...

Some writing is becoming unintelligible

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

i cnt c ur problem m8. :)

But seriously, kiddie slang is one thing, but when the degradation reaches the point at which the writer is no longer understandable, that's not language evolution as part of some natural process of change, that's just illiteracy, pure and simple.

Here's a small anecdote I sometimes relate when this subject comes up. When I'm not messing around on Slashdot, I often help out on some on-line programming forums, particularly those dedicated to helping less experienced people learn new skills. The quality of posts there vary from nicely written, polite, clear requests for help, to L337sp33k "can u do my homework 4 me kthx" drivel. Guess which posts the expert volunteers invest their time answering?

The really saddening thing, though, is when you see a post from someone who clearly is making a genuine effort, but simply isn't making sense because their language skills are so poor. Some of us try to help those people to clarify what they're asking and to form their questions more helpfully, but at the end of the day, their lack of literacy is directly disadvantaging them. If that's what they get on a board dedicated to helping them and run by volunteers who are willing to give up a certain amount of their time for that purpose, what are they going to get in the job market, for example?

Orwell said it better

[Pavatius]

Orwell wrote this same essay with more style and more grace in 1946. He also wrote it with a point in mind. It's called 'Politics and the English Language'. Google it and read it instead of this lame Wired article.

This essay is just a rant and that the coming generation is doomed, doomed, doomed! People have been saying that about the coming generation since ancient times. Ironically for someone who criticizes the emptiness of writing in the modern age, the author also says very little. Some writing by some people sucks. There are a lot of some people. Duh.

The author also ignores the enormous quantity of written material produced on a daily basis. Just because his friends and acquaintences are semi-literate doesn't mean the rest of us travel in the same circles of bad grammar and poor diction. It's really a sort of pompous thing to say from a position of authority that 'the world' can't write, read MY article it will tell you so. Sigh. Noob.

Other pressures

[Bombula]

I think we will start to see more of an impact on literacy from the employment market in the coming years. One of the biggest things I hear employers complain about is that young hires can barely write a coherent sentence, and consequently can't be relied upon to compose text for important presentations, reports, and so on. Assuming grammar checking software that magically turns shite into gold doesn't materialize in the very near future, we may well see an emphasis on writing skills trickle down from the knowledge-worker market to universities, colleges, and high schools. Let's hope so, anyway.

Stamp Out Bad Words!

[Tony]

I fucking hate the word "usage." Nobody uses it correctly, if there is a single correct use. Usually, the use "usage" when they mean "use."

What total losage.

I blame comic books. They contribute to a short attention span. Fucking comic books, with their pretty pictures and busty, half-clad superwomen. Mmmmm.... Superwoman. If Superwoman and Wonder Woman had a fight in, say, a tub of Jell-o, who do you think would lose her top first?

More people communicate today than have ever communicated before. The poor grammar they exhibit is probably a result of these amatuers being, well, amatuers. People 100 years ago mostly didn't write; those that did were generally better-educated.

I would say that literacy is on the rise, not the inverse.

Comic Book Generation?

[monopole]

Um, comic book generation? Has this fellow just recieved "Seduction of the Innocent" via Pony Express? The average Generation Y kid has seldom seen a comic book, they don't show up on the news stand anymore. The average of the modern comic book reader is 34 and the level of the high end of the comic book market is considerably more literate than this fool. For example Warren Ellis'es issue of Planetary "Death Machine Telemetry" discusses the afterlife, nanotechnology, Richard Feynman, the Delphic oracle (and speculations on the biochemical nature of the fumes they inhaled) and the Kabbalah in one brilliant episode. Ellis probably used a shorter word count than this wanker used.

Of course he might mean manga, having been confused by the mysterious ways of the distant orient. Given that a huge percentage of the population read manga over in Japan, and use e-mail and texting, this must account for their horrific litteracy rates. Horrifically high that is.

Sometimes writing really does change for the worse

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I'm over 40 and (therefore) hopelessly out of touch. I have my own set of grammatic foibles (using of parentheses to offer alternate readings is one (recursive use of parentheses another)) that I ask readers to cope with. Ignore me if you like.

My big complaint with some writers who are growing up as part of the IM generation (we had zephyr-grams, and we liked 'em! - so there) is the use of styles that make text easier to write but harder to read. Things like lack of punctuation, no capitalization, numbers as abbreviations for words make writing quick, are handy when trying to write text on phone keypad, but slow down the reader.

not to be flip, but isn't this natural?

[xeno]

Good. More jobs for me, and with a little work, my kids. (Ok, it's a lot of work, including reading to my kids 30-45 minutes a day, and the older one (6) is transitioning to reading to us. But I digress.)

Seriously, not everyone can be a rocket scientist. Some folks have to take less mentally-strenuous jobs, and the upside to that is that it takes less education and effort to get a job that focuses on rote process or repetitive simple problem-solving. Of course, there's the whole unfairness issue relating to people who work in jobs that are physically or emotionally draining for shit pay, but that's not the issue here. It used to be that motivated people could rise to hit the maximum vocation that their formal or self education allowed. Now it seems that educated people sink to the vocational level that their self motivation and application of that education allows. Same effect, no?

My brother, for example, is an overeducated undermotivated weenie who's dumbed himself down with IM-speak, and wonders why he's not an appealing job candidate. But that brings up an interesting issue: I don't think that the deterioration of language skills can be examined in a vacuum. What about the deterioration of social skills that seems to accompany the IM-speak txting crap? IM/TXT communciations involve effects from reduced level of effort, lack of persistence, reduced affect, and perceived levels of anonymity.

All I have is anecdotal evidence, but the idea of sending thank-you letters, participating in professional societies, and writing articles for review by your peers seems totally alien to that crowd. And I don't mean to be stuck-up about that. An article for your peers might be a well-written blog entry or a political rant in email, not necessarily an academic paper. >>>> My point is that if you notice that people are sharing soundbites instead of whole ideas, then it makes sense to take a look at the mode of sharing, not just the sound-bite vs whole-idea issue.

Jon

Re:Not quite surprising!

[Tablizer]

And even here, instead of accepting grammatical and spelling mistakes, people would rather flame you for correcting them....if folks do not communicate in good English, I'd simply not respond

I consider slashdot a "beerhall for geeks". It is not the Toastmasters club. Formality slows things down and makes people hesitant to participate. We are organic beings and make organic errors. Stop trying to turn us into Arian robots.

It is just not polite to correct other's grammar, spelling, etc. Perhaps it would be nice if slashot had a feature for personal private grammer complaints to be posted. One could read them if they want, or ignore them.

Otherwise, get over it. Go sort your sock drawer or something. Should we burn Einstein's writings just because he may have made some grammatical errors?

Re:Sometimes writing really does change for the wo

[Jane_Dozey]

They also make for a worse overall reading experience. I'm only 23 (and therefore not *quite* out of touch) but I can't stand overuse of abbreviations and rubbish punctuation. On a mobile phone it can be excused but when writing a letter, or even a /. posting, more effort should be put into creating something both readable and articulate. Of course, a few minor spelling/grammer/punctuation mistakes *should* be tolerated :P

anachrolicious

[macsox]

comic book generation? was this written in 1950? what kid reads comic books today? and, incidentally, my memory is that comic books have fairly good grammar and spelling, with the exceptions of your 'pow's and 'biff's.

Re:No..

[pomo monster]

So you say, but from whence the pudding? As language gets more freeform--that is, while remaining cognizant of the rules and informed by convention, likelier and likelier nevertheless to flaunt them, to deliberately ignore them for purposes not apparently so much in evidence to you--does that not make it more expressive, not less? Dashing off a text message replete with abbreviations and symbol mash might indicate thoughtlessness, if sent to someone you barely know. The same thing might indicate a shared sense of privacy, if to a friend or close associate. Either way, the literal interpretation of your message is given color and additional meaning by your chosen form of expression, much pithier for having avoided the verbosity of conventional (read: stodgy) English, and correspondingly so more piercing and direct.

Communication is nothing if not contextual in essence and expression, and to declare that it is robbed of meaning by our contemporary canvas, wide at the margins, is to mistake grammar for literary intent.

Re:Sometimes writing really does change for the wo

[Lovejoy]

I agree, Jane. If a Slashdot post, Usenet posting, or distribution list is so poorly written that it pains me, I just ignore it. If someone doesn't respect me enough to take the most basic care, I don't feel the need to read their thoughts. Their thoughts are invariably as sloppy as their mechanics.

Now, I'm not a pedant - I'm talking about posts that don't use any capital letters- very rarely use punctuation, and string half-baked thoughts together like popcorn on a Christmas tree. I'm not talking about people who make mistakes -that's all of us. I'm talking about people who don't care that they make 20 mistakes in a single post/email.

Re:historical myopia

[nagora]

they need to communicate. these needs are nver going away,

A classic example of the smug "I'm on the cutting edge of language, I just look dumb" crowd that spurn clear communication as old-fashioned. Capitals, and most typographic conventions, add information to your writing for a tiny, tiny amount of extra effort. Throwing away (which is not the same as developing) a system which has been honed by centuries of trial and error is a sign of foolishness and an inability to grasp complex ideas rather than any some special talent to be proud of.

TWW

Re:Sometimes writing really does change for the wo

[TheRaven64]

I, too, am 23 and completely concur. When I write things, it is on the assumption that other people will read them. To write them in a way that makes this difficult is nothing short of impolite. Since the circulation for my published articles can be in the hundred thousands (thanks OSNews / Slashdot), that is a lot of people for me to be impolite to at once. Generally, I prefer to only be rude to people one at a time.

I learned to read when I was three. Over the last twenty years, my brain has gradually optimised the paths used to recognise words and parse phrases and sentences until the point where I can do it very quickly. If you write in a way that is ambiguous, then I have to pause and try both ways of interpreting your sentence. If you spell things incorrectly, then I will have to backtrack and re-parse. If you use 'you're' instead of 'your' (for example) then I will get to the end of your sentence, realise it doesn't make sense, and spend a second re-parsing it. Over the length of an article, then a number of mistakes like this may waste a minute or two of my time[1]. Now, imagine you have 100,000 readers. You have just wasted 100,000 person-minutes. That works out at just under seventy person-days. If you are willing to waste that much time out of laziness then you are no better than a spammer.

[1] Actually, it won't. I will simply decide that if your ideas are not important enough to express well, then they are not important enough for me to read, and move on.

Technology Exposes Reality

[xdroop]

I disagree -- the technology is not leading to an inability to communicate. Technology is making it possible to circulate written items far more widely and easily than before. This merely exposes a reality long hidden: the vast majority of people have never been able to communicate in the written form.

Re:Not quite surprising!

[Chandon Seldon]

Remember to differentiate between contexts that cleanly fit into the traditional writing category (email, blogs) and those that replace spoken communication (IMs, text messages). Usage of spoken english is different than written english, and we don't know what apropriate general usage for realtime textual communication looks like yet.

Re:Not the whole story

[bomb_number_20]

Don't drag independent thinking into this. That has absolutely nothing to do with the point being discussed. Neither does one's 'true nature'. Using that sort of thing as an argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot. In fact, any argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot.

To be honest, I read your post and my first thoughts were that you were young, immature and not very bright. maybe not a big deal in a /. forum, but what if you were looking for a job?

Sure, you can say that you run your important stuff through a spelling checker; but what about the grammar? Now what? Grammar checkers are notoriously bad, and spelling checkers won't pick up mistakes like misspelling 'lose' as 'loose'.

You still need to know the rules.

Language and the Speed of Change

[Sw0rdfiche]

The observation that language is in a constant state of change is true. What is so interesting about the way language is changing today is the speed and the direction. Language is a direct reflection of how fast things change. Language is, in part, the way we describe that change.

Change, as noted by "Future Shock" and several more reputable sources, has accelerated in the past fifty years at breakneck speed. Discussions of our inability as people to absorb all of this change have led to the by now familiar "Singularity" discussions. If even a fraction of this is true, it would stand to reason that language and its use would be one of the first place this all manifests.

I am less interested in protecting the "King's English" than I am with the ability of one generation to communicate with the next in a complex and meaningful way. There is plenty of well written discourse on the Internet. I do not see that declining. The ghettoization of language as a marketing tool worries me a bit more, since it is sold as a generational identity.

My conversations with people in their early twenties shows me they are just as bright and articulate as anyone. Their opinions on language are much different. One of my favorites is the compression of language and meaning in rap music. Rap is a great place to look at the elasticity of language. Aside from the "bitches and ho's " rhetoric, which is the low end of that artform, there is clear and skillful use of language, rhythm and tone at work.

The other movement in language is the migration to visual rather than verbal communication. Language is no longer just about words. Image has changed the way we speak, the way we communicate, the way we articualte. The "comic-book" culture may not be a bad thing. The issue is not about comics- this is a medium that has a powerful and complex ability to communicate. The issue is that it is used mostly to communicate sex and power fantasies. However, I find it interesting that Dan Clowes now has a weekly comic that runs in the New York Times Magazine.

There is some virtue to being a "keeper of the flame" as far a literature is concerned. But television, movies and the internet are changing the concepts of literature. In the 21st century, is a good library just books, or does it include DVDs and CDs as well?

Part of the issue might have to do with the definition of language. If we insist on sticking to the definition where language is exclusively the written word, then language indeed might be in trouble, but not for the reasons mentioned.

A simple test

[ColaMan]

This closely ties in with the recent article about college students being unable to decipher credit card agreements.

Basically :
If you cannot read an End User License Agreement and understand what it is saying, you need to improve your English skills. NOW.

Legalese is the last bastion of specifically correct, carefully worded, properly formed English. Even words such as "shall" or "should" - the meaning of which can usually be inferred in everyday English - are often explicitly defined to avoid confusion. And you can be damned sure that Legalese is not going anywhere soon. If you can't comprehend Legalese (or any form of complex English), you're going to end up in a whole lot of trouble one day down the track. If you can comprehend it, you essentially have a grasp of the correct structure and form of Modern English.

The leet-speak, IM'ing crowd can poo-pooh it as much as they want, but learning correct English will serve you well in the future.

I'll give you a hint

[starX]

Attila the Hun didn't sack Rome because of his masterful literary skills. Nor did the Visigoths, the Ostrigoths, or any of the other barbrian hordes that had a hand in Rome's destruction. Mainly they used superior weaponry and military tactics, and I think we're pretty covered there.

The guy is nuts!

[M0b1u5]

Sadly, what starts out with a good headline turns into a mindless smudge pretty quickly. This guy is a nutcase: he wants calculators banned from classrooms. The calculator, one of the very few GENUINELY helpful and intuitive devices ever created by man. It is one of the VERY FEW things which actually do make humans smarter, and it's possible to use one without an instruction manual - a pre-requisite for any device to qualify as "well designed".

He also states he wants students to study Latin (I did, for 6 years) and minor in English Literature.

These two assertions make him a complete fool - and not worth the pixels he's used.

His concept may be correct, but his ability to deliver his message has itself been ruined due to his inability to remain neutral and objective on the topic. He's also failed to address the central thesis of his article, and this is:

"Failure in language causes an inability to think clearly, to create complex inventions inside the skull, and to communicate effectively with other human beings."

Frankly, the only thing which seperates us from animals is language. Tool use and large brains are not uncommon, only we have created language to extend our brains and knowledge beyond our inherent abilities.

Poor language skills will ALWAYS be fine to exchange pleasantries, stupid repartee, insults, and a wide range of human ideas, but they will NEVER permit the creation or accurate dissemination of complex new ideas.

In other words, it lies at the very heart of human ability.

Why blame technology?

[pross]

The author of TFA is right to deplore low standards of communication skills online, but wrong to blame technology. Instant messaging, chat rooms and the rest merely make an eternal problem visible. People who are incapable of writing anything more interesting than "LOL" and "m3 2" are also incapable of saying anything more interesting, and always have been. The visibility of the problem has changed, not its cause - which is, quite simply, that many people can't or won't express coherent thoughts in any medium. The percentage of such people is probably much the same as it always was, or even less, since there are fewer "mute, inglorious Miltons" being denied opportunities to learn.

Unless a way is found of boosting intelligence, there isn't going to be a solution to the problem of bad writing, but it will probably become less visible when the present text-based methods of communication (or non-communication) are superseded for most people by speech-based methods, derived from VOIP or whatever. Those of us who read and write may, at worst, be left with faint traces of the horde's brief invasion, if such ugly spellings as "u" for "you" persist, but so what? The English language was perhaps richer and more subtle when we wrote "ye" in the nominative and "thou" or "thee" in the singular, but we didn't enter a dark age when we stopped doing so.

Old fart

[Mr. McGibby]

Math is a different matter. No student should be allowed to bring a calculator into a math class. Ever.

This is when I stopped reading TFA. So, pray tell, master of what is wrong with education, when exactly should our intrepid students learn to use a calculator, one of the most useful inventions since we got rid of the slide rule?

This a falicious argument that when taken to its logical conclusion implies that all students should understand particle physics in order to use the web. While it may be true that learning how to do long division gives a student some greater insight into how math works, that doesn't mean that it is useful to them. I know how to do long division, and I think I understand division a little better because I do, but was the three years it took to learn in elementary school worth it? I've used this "greater understanding" maybe 4 or 5 times in my life. I don't think it was worth 3 years of my young life, when I could've been learning something more relevant to modern life.

There are lots of things that are useful to know, but we're not going to learn all of them. And teaching kids things we learned just because we had to, has more to do with bitterness about things like long division and less to do with their success in life.

Required homework for this topic

[cagle_.25]

Before you get too self-righteous about those old fuddy-duddy thinkers, perhaps you ought to do the following:

1) Try to grade a set of English papers.
2) Read Less Than Words Can Say by Richard Mitchell.
3) Stop and contemplate whether it is really in the best interest of the younger generation to speak and write in a way that makes them uncomprehesible to the older generation.

Then ask yourself: is the language changing in order to become more flexible (a la Shakespeare), or is the language changing in order to accommodate more sloppy thinking? Both could be true in different cases, of course, but on average -- which is the case?

Language is a tool, no more and no less. If you want to mod the tool, then fine. But if in the process you wreck that tool, then your mods need some more thought.

Re:Testing for New Hires

[RevDobbs]

Unless you plan on having your techs spend the day hand-writing notes

I believe that was his point; these are field techs, and they may have to document their experiences, costs, and/or services provided by hand. I don't know about "Geek Squad", but I have never had a field tech bring along a printer and leave me with a nice, typed receipt of what he just did (yes, I'm sure there are tech support shops with that kind of setup, but I haven't used one).

Whose language?

[C10H14N2]

...I mean, they didn't call it "The Vulgate" for no reason.

I think what is at issue is that with the rise of universal education, we've demanded that everyone speak, read and write at a level of education that has not commonly existed but for the last century, really, just the last few decades. If you took random samples of 18yos in the early 19th century and today, no doubt you would be far more horrified at the former's ability to communicate than the latter.

I remember reading an article recently which argued that the distressing thing about the intellectual state of civilization isn't that we aren't producing great minds the way we used to, it's that there are now so many, in so many highly specialized fields, that people have a hard time keeping track of those outside their field of specialization (arguably, even within), ergo, everyone is under the illusion that all is going to hell simply because they can't grasp the volume of advances that are being made.

Re:Hmmm...

[__aaclcg7560]

What happened to punctuation, capitalisation, spelling and understanding of homophones?

You need to go to college to learn that. I never learned anything when growing up because the school district had me labeled as "mentally retarded" and didn't want to reclassify me as "normal" since they would lose the extra money. After dropping out of high school and working for a few years, I was able to go to the community college to get my associate degree in four years. (Not having a high school diploma or completing the GED made it difficult getting some jobs even though I had a more advance education.) Started off in Introductory English until I finished with tech writing.

Splinter -- log

[Anonymous Coward]

I have decided that when I hire [may have meant "conduct testing prior to hiring"] techs, I am going to ask ["require"] them to write an essay, using pen and ink, [uneeded commas] giving the [incorrect definite article] intructions [spelling] on how to use a mouse for someone who is a computer beginner. [poor sentence structure] (Think your grandmother). [fragment] No internet research allowed. This tests several things. [Are you referring to the restriction on internet research? Also, a colon is missing here.]
I have decided that when I hire [may have meant "conduct testing prior to hiring"] techs, I am going to ask ["require"] them to write an essay, using pen and ink, [uneeded commas] giving the [incorrect definite article] intructions [spelling] on how to use a mouse for someone who is a computer beginner. [poor sentence structure] (Think your grandmother). [fragment] No internet [capitalization missing] research allowed. This tests several ["four"] things. [Are you referring to the restriction on Internet research? Also, a colon is missing here.]

      1. Penmanship. [fragment] Can I read their writing or their field notes, or is it all garbage? [false dichotomy]
      2. Their technical understanding. [fragment] Mouse operation is a common and simple task, but elements like right click, down button vs [missing period] up button actions, [This is unclear. Are you referring to "moving" vs. "dragging"? I'm unsure whether to criticize the missing hyphens or the solecism "button actions" here.] etc. are not immediately intuitive. [redundant]
      3. Their ability to communicate. [fragment] Can they communicate something they understand in a clear and concise fashion? Especially [sic - should be "particularly"] to someone [sic - should be "those"] without expertise or substantial experience in the field. [fragment]
      4. Can they get to the point, or is the essay filled with lots of [unneeded intensifier] technical fluff, jargon, and assorted filler?

Of course, I'll test for other things as well. [Such as?] Unfortunately, this [unclear antecedant] may be a humbling experience for some applicants.

Communication is not grammar

[Easy2RememberNick]

Fine, if "u want 2 rite" like that I'm sure your friends will know what you mean. Try that when you need to apply for a job and see how far you get.

  Just because you don't care how people older than you speak doesn't mean you'll never interact with them. You don't have to have to be an English Professor but at least know how to spell!

  It's about communication not grammar.

Re:Testing for New Hires

[munpfazy]

I've heard, "I've never been able to spell well" as an excuse for poor spelling for years, but what that really says is, "I don't consider the details of proper spelling important, since people will understand what I mean anyway. If someone can't be bothered to attend to the relatively easy-to-manage detail of correct spelling, why should I think they'll pay enough attention to other details that aren't as easy to manage?"

Translation: I cannot conceive of the existence of someone whose natural abilities and strengths differ from mine, and therefore they must be lazy bastards who just don't care enough to bother learning what I consider easy.

Just imagine the response if I were to say, "I've heard, `I've never been able to learn multivariable calculus' as an excuse for a poor understanding of basic physics for years, but what that really says is, `I don't consider the details of the world around me important, since other people will probably overlook any mistakes I make when describing it.' If someone can't be bothered to understand the most basic aspects of the physical world with which they interact on a daily basis, why should I think they'll pay enough attention to other details that aren't as fundamental and immediately applicable to their daily lives?"

People would call me a lunatic if I said something like that in public, and yet writing a textbook that derives all of multivariable calculus and its applications from scratch is a trivial task compared to, say, memorizing the correct spelling for the 5'000 most common English words.

Spelling is by no means an easy task for everyone, even for many of us who haven't been diagnosed with a "legitimate difficulty with spelling." It may be true that, if we chose to dedicate a significant portion of our lives to memorizing words, we could achieve the level of competency that those with a natural affinity for the subject display. But then we'd never get anything done in those areas for which we have a genuine talent.

Fortunately, there are now tools available which allow poor spellers to communicate effectively even with those too narrow minded to overlook poor spelling. Expecting someone to use correct spelling when publishing electronic text is perfectly reasonable. Anyone who allows spelling errors to appear in electronic documents *is* being lazy, since there are so many free and painless tools available to translate our text into correctly spelled words.

To require that an applicant be capable of somehow generating correctly spelled text when necessary is appropriate; however, to demand that an applicant spell well when writing in pen and ink, when they are being hired for a job that doesn't require doing so on a regular basis, is just silly. Judge us by the job for which we are being hired, not by how closely our skill set happens to match yours.

Re:Testing for New Hires

[gordo3000]

But that depends. I think in calculus, a calculator should be banned unless it is a four function calculator. Understand how to do relatively complex derivatives and integrals by hand is very important and it is a skill few people have. I was the only student in Quantum Mechanics last semester that could do Fourier series and integrals by hand because I had developed a good basic intuition in calculus in high school.

This was very important as there are several integrals that I can do by hand that baffle all calculators and the answers I end up giving are much more intuitive (most of the time). Furthermore, several simple linear algebra problems are much easier to be by hand(though those problems are few and far between outside of physics).

But then again, knowing how to use a calculator to evaluate a great deal of mundane information (especially in statistics) is very important. There is very little insight to be gained by finding the standard deviation by hand.

Yes, Unreadability is different from change.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I've got a good parser and it can handle "OMG! ROTFLMAO!" with aplomb. That's a sentence with a clear meaning. I will, however, come to a painful crashing halt if I read something like "caused Apple to loose their lawsuit". Words have meanings. Loosing and losing are separate concepts and always will be separate concepts whatever the words are that represent them.

If you can't say what you mean, how can you mean what you say?

(I'm doomed now. I've complained about grammar in public. There is certain to be a humiliating typo in here somewhere.)

Re:Testing for New Hires

[rob_squared]

Well, it would help if you weren't comparing two drastically different things. In a language, there are easy things to wrote, like small words and nontechnical dissertations. There are also difficult things to write, like if you are writing technical documents like an engineering manual or medical text. If you discuss multivariable calculus specifically it is something out of the range of experience for normal people. A much better analogy (and one that doesn't support your point) is to compair spelling ability with general math ability. Certain math problems are easy, like 2+2 but others are much harder sqrt(17). Both can be done by hand, but we understandably have different views of what we expect from people trying to perform them. I don't expect people to be able to flawlessly write documents like they were in a spelling bee. I also don't expect people to multiply 9 digit numbers in their head. But if you find someone who's unable to use the correct tense in a sentence, can't spell a phrase such as, "no one", and cannot use the correct homonym, then you shouldn't be coddling them and saying, "it's alright."

Don't protect people from their mistakes, let them learn from them.

Re:Sometimes writing really does change for the wo

[Lodragandraoidh]

I learned to read when I was three.

You hit upon a key point there. Vocabulary, grammar and spelling are not improved significantly through writing; they are improved by reading well written works that challenge your current knowledge.

The larger your vocabulary, the more accurately you can describe the world. The better your grammar, the more likely you will be to keep your readers interested in the subject matter. The more accurate your spelling the less confusion you will sow among your readers.

Re:Testing for New Hires

[Just Some Guy]

Penmanship. Can I read their writing or their field notes, or is it all garbage?

Please don't do this. I can quickly jot short, easily legible notes. However, I have the common geek affliction of being wholly unable to lightly grip a pencil or pen. Halfway through the first page of the essay, I'd be holding my aching wrist and cursing you and your family.

On the other hand (boo!), I think I could type an entire dictionary without problems. Never once in two decades in the workforce have I needed to write a lengthy message where typing wasn't accepted - and expected. This isn't exactly a professional handicap (boo again!).

Ask me to write something short and you'll be pleased with the results. Ask me to pen something longer and neither of us will be happy. If you want examples of my writing abilities, I'll be glad to provide copies of my published magazine articles. Please don't make me jump through painful, irrelevant hoops.