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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.
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.
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.
You didn't really have to go and proove them right, did you?
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
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.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Goerge was wrong.
So instead of double speek in 1984, we get half speek in 2006.
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.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
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.)
Dvorak on Doomtech
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.
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.
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
I think not...(*poof*)
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.
go get it
This doesn't actually mean anything relevant to the current conversation.
All this says is that the MEDIUM changes. The language itself, and the ability for a person to appropriately and effectively communicate concepts and ideas, has nothing to do with whether it is written on bark, slate, or paper, written with chalk, pencil, or pen.
Shinma
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!"
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.
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
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.
> 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.
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.
Accuracy of the quotes aside, you'd have made a much more interesting and relevant point had the progression gone more like this.
"Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems.
They depend upon their slates which are more expensive. What will they do
when their slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!"
-Teacher's Conference, 1790
"Students today use too much paper too much. They don't know how
to write on slate without getting all dusty. They can't clean a slate.
What will they do when they all run all out of paper?"
-Principal's Association, 1815
"Students are loosing their mind. They don't know how to do the things
that get them ink. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write
all those curly letters and cute numbers until they're next trip to the
place with shops and stores. I am crying."
-The Rural Amercan Teecher, 1929
"Students 2day use spensive pens. They like, what the heck is a strait
pin and nib(?) (dont' get me started on quills). They need to stop riting
and facus on sports and singing so they can be rich."
-PTA Paper,1941
"Pens ruin teachy-smarts in US. Kids use pens. Throw pens away.
Good US goodness, not waste, gone. Shop-shop and save-save all gone.
Me eat pens. Pens good food, not write-write."
-a cave, 1950
The quotes above are real, btw, I got them using my time machine (thanks John T.), a Britney Spears album which I dropped off in the early 1800's, and Google Talk, so please no comments to the effect that I made these up. That kind of thing hurts. Seriously. Ouch.
Here's a perfect example of why proper punctuation is important (not mine, I stole it from someone else, can't remember who though):
I helped my uncle jack off a horse
I'm either a very helpful, or a very sick person. Which one is anyone's guess.