Slashdot Mirror
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.
Indeed. But why does this not surprise me?
Why go far, look right here on Slashdot. These are geeks, supposedly the folks who're "smarter" than the average population.
And even here, instead of accepting grammatical and spelling mistakes, people would rather flame you for correcting them. Not to mention the piss-poor quality of writing that most Slashdotters (and the editors) have. If you can follow the rules in a programming language, why is it so hard to do so for a natural language?
Personally, if folks do not communicate in good English, I'd simply not respond - be it IM, SMS or e-mail. And guess what? Most folks talk a lot better English when they're communicating with me, simply because they know that they'd not get a response - or that they'd get their English corrected.
I do not care if you are using e-mail, IM or SMS, use that period and use that apostrophe. Use appropriate and proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar, else I'm simply not talking to you.
That needs to be the general attitude, if we want to see any semblance of Good English (TM) exist in the next few generations.
Seriously, encourage your kids to look up that dictionary. Encourage them to read good literature, aside from the pop crap that exists today. Encourage them to write, to put down their thoughts. The only way you are going to develop writing skills is by writing.
It is quite interesting how I did a whole lot better in the English classes at an American university than most Americans, even though English is my third language. At first I thought they were smart but they just didn't care, but it turned out that they really didn't know to write and they didn't care.
I guess I expected everyone to do worse in science only, not in Enlish -- their own language! Oh, well, more jobs for immigrants like me, "Thanks! US primary educational system!"
Perhaps if you weren't so condescending you'd realize that your research is no better than the parent poster's. Speaking as someone who holds a PhD in classical studies, I can tell you that literacy did indeed survive, in a few good way, after the collapse of the Western Empire as you say. Where do you think most of our manuscripts for ancient texts come from? Monks, from this very time period. It's not called the "dark ages" because everyone was stupid, it's been called the "dark ages" for so long because we just haven't known a lot about the period. Beowulf, one of the great epic poems, was composing in this time period, and no doubt many other texts that we have yet to uncover (and probably will never uncover). "Dark" doesn't mean dumb, it means unknown.