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Unlearning grammar on the Internet?
Aside from textspeak and l33tspeak, which are abberations but have specific uses, there is a third form of speech which strikes me as wholly uncreative and merely a poor way of communicating. It's the increasing number of people who simply cease using punctuation and capitalization entirely.
This might not bother me so much if we spoke a language that had a lot of sophisticated features to remember, like accent marks, case, gender, etc. But we speak a fairly simplistic, practical language where people managed to lose a fairly useful feature (such as a distinct form for second person singular) within a couple generations. In other words, speakers of our language have already demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice precision for simplicity, and in ways that not many other languages would accept.
While I do sometimes say in personal communication that people who type this way are "typing like idiots," I have to admit that this doesn't really have much to do with raw intelligence nowadays. I've seen plenty of otherwise intelligent people either writing this way, or "learning" to write this way over time they spend in online communities. There are three excuses they commonly give, only one of which is actually valid.
1. "It's faster to type this way."
It actually takes VERY slightly longer to read and comprehend text with no capitalization or commas, where there is no definite boundary between sentences or demarcation of important names. The time it takes the listener to understand you makes up for any perceived advantage. If you are a fairly fast typist, it barely takes any time at all to insert the punctuation or hit Shift to capitalize. Maybe there are people who still "hunt and peck" in this day and age, but that's an entirely different problem. Let's not get into the retraining time costs when you get into this habit, and then need to type a report and catch yourself every few sentences.
2. "People think I'm weird if I don't type this way."
Well, this is quite a circular notion, isn't it? You're contributing to the problem by accepting popular ideas regarding proper communication, which are ill-informed and poorly researched. By typing in this way, you've accepted the popular idea and are acting to reinforce it for others who may come by. There will be a large difference if a new person comes by and sees a few people typing correctly (they might align themselves with these), and several others not doing so, than if they see no one else speaking correctly (there will be immense unspoken pressure to conform).
3. "I use the Internet on my Phone, and it takes forever to use punctuation or capitalize."
This is the third reason that I'm forced to consider as valid, and I see it as a major contributor to the acceptance of this type of speech on the Internet. It seems that the upswing in acceptance did occur immediately after the mass acceptance of smartphones, particularly the iPhone. I think the fact that phones are pushing people to communicate in an imprecise manner is a problem that needs to be addressed. We need better phone keyboards that allow faster input, and which make it easier to input the proper symbols for our language. Otherwise, the next century might very well see grammar disappear entirely, even from the dictionary.
Now, allow me to explain why I think it's reprehensible to type in this way. It actually has very little to do with intelligence directly.
First off, it's disrespectful. What you are communicating to me, and anyone else who didn't grow up in the smartphone era, is that you do not care about the people to whom you are writing. You are saying that you don't care if it's a little harder to process, and that you aren't willing to take an extra few seconds to produce proper writing. You're saying that you care primarily about your own convenience, and are generally being flippant towards both precision and established convention.
Secondly, it makes you look bad. Perhaps I don't actually judge you as "stupid" for typing in this way, but I do correctly evaluate a whole lot of other things. I see you as someone who follows the path of least resistance and simply emulates their peers without consideration. I see you as appealing to a group of people who are unsophisticated and childish in their habits. It also shows that you don't care what kind of image of yourself you transmit to others. You don't mind being seen as superficial, sloppy, or below-average. In a way, it makes you like an intelligent person that deliberately does poorly on tests to make Bs and Cs (or worse, in some cases) in order to be accepted by their lower-performing peers.
Finally, it gives me doubts about your refinement and ability to discriminate; that is, your ability to make good, informed choices between different options. If you cannot even consider for yourself whether to capitalize a letter or insert a comma to increase clarity when needed, then why should I expect that you can make other good choices using your own judgment? It shows to me that clarity, coherence, and precision are just not part of your value system the way that they are part of mine. You may be intelligent, certainly, but if you don't consider those things to be important, then why should I expect them from you even if you're capable? Now, I would easily believe that a person who wrote poorly was still good at determining efficiency, scheduling, organizing people, or something along those lines. But that's a different sort of thing entirely.
Writing is directly linked to higher critical faculties, though. It's a window into the mind. So the question is... do you want that window to be fogged up and cracked, or do you want it to be clear and clean? Think about this carefully. Anyway, thank you for reading.
It seems to be more or less destroying grammar, or at least calling it irrelevant. What should bother people is the fact that this mode of speech has become the accepted standard for much of the Internet, to the point that people who type the way I do are seen as "overly formal." I particularly dislike the fact that typing this way is seen as "casual," rather than "incorrect and sloppy," because that's what it actually is.they type like this annoying isnt it lol
This might not bother me so much if we spoke a language that had a lot of sophisticated features to remember, like accent marks, case, gender, etc. But we speak a fairly simplistic, practical language where people managed to lose a fairly useful feature (such as a distinct form for second person singular) within a couple generations. In other words, speakers of our language have already demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice precision for simplicity, and in ways that not many other languages would accept.
While I do sometimes say in personal communication that people who type this way are "typing like idiots," I have to admit that this doesn't really have much to do with raw intelligence nowadays. I've seen plenty of otherwise intelligent people either writing this way, or "learning" to write this way over time they spend in online communities. There are three excuses they commonly give, only one of which is actually valid.
1. "It's faster to type this way."
It actually takes VERY slightly longer to read and comprehend text with no capitalization or commas, where there is no definite boundary between sentences or demarcation of important names. The time it takes the listener to understand you makes up for any perceived advantage. If you are a fairly fast typist, it barely takes any time at all to insert the punctuation or hit Shift to capitalize. Maybe there are people who still "hunt and peck" in this day and age, but that's an entirely different problem. Let's not get into the retraining time costs when you get into this habit, and then need to type a report and catch yourself every few sentences.
2. "People think I'm weird if I don't type this way."
Well, this is quite a circular notion, isn't it? You're contributing to the problem by accepting popular ideas regarding proper communication, which are ill-informed and poorly researched. By typing in this way, you've accepted the popular idea and are acting to reinforce it for others who may come by. There will be a large difference if a new person comes by and sees a few people typing correctly (they might align themselves with these), and several others not doing so, than if they see no one else speaking correctly (there will be immense unspoken pressure to conform).
3. "I use the Internet on my Phone, and it takes forever to use punctuation or capitalize."
This is the third reason that I'm forced to consider as valid, and I see it as a major contributor to the acceptance of this type of speech on the Internet. It seems that the upswing in acceptance did occur immediately after the mass acceptance of smartphones, particularly the iPhone. I think the fact that phones are pushing people to communicate in an imprecise manner is a problem that needs to be addressed. We need better phone keyboards that allow faster input, and which make it easier to input the proper symbols for our language. Otherwise, the next century might very well see grammar disappear entirely, even from the dictionary.
Now, allow me to explain why I think it's reprehensible to type in this way. It actually has very little to do with intelligence directly.
First off, it's disrespectful. What you are communicating to me, and anyone else who didn't grow up in the smartphone era, is that you do not care about the people to whom you are writing. You are saying that you don't care if it's a little harder to process, and that you aren't willing to take an extra few seconds to produce proper writing. You're saying that you care primarily about your own convenience, and are generally being flippant towards both precision and established convention.
Secondly, it makes you look bad. Perhaps I don't actually judge you as "stupid" for typing in this way, but I do correctly evaluate a whole lot of other things. I see you as someone who follows the path of least resistance and simply emulates their peers without consideration. I see you as appealing to a group of people who are unsophisticated and childish in their habits. It also shows that you don't care what kind of image of yourself you transmit to others. You don't mind being seen as superficial, sloppy, or below-average. In a way, it makes you like an intelligent person that deliberately does poorly on tests to make Bs and Cs (or worse, in some cases) in order to be accepted by their lower-performing peers.
Finally, it gives me doubts about your refinement and ability to discriminate; that is, your ability to make good, informed choices between different options. If you cannot even consider for yourself whether to capitalize a letter or insert a comma to increase clarity when needed, then why should I expect that you can make other good choices using your own judgment? It shows to me that clarity, coherence, and precision are just not part of your value system the way that they are part of mine. You may be intelligent, certainly, but if you don't consider those things to be important, then why should I expect them from you even if you're capable? Now, I would easily believe that a person who wrote poorly was still good at determining efficiency, scheduling, organizing people, or something along those lines. But that's a different sort of thing entirely.
Writing is directly linked to higher critical faculties, though. It's a window into the mind. So the question is... do you want that window to be fogged up and cracked, or do you want it to be clear and clean? Think about this carefully. Anyway, thank you for reading.
Comments
When it comes to something along the lines of email or a forum, where I have more time to think about what I'm typing before I actually type it, I always use proper capitalization and punctuation.
also tldr;
Commas are not just thrown in where you think you might pause. There are rules governing their use, and most people do not seem to know them. When I see a comma, it is a signal that something is contained before or after it. If it is a random comma, suddenly I am very confused as to what you are trying to say because you don't have the kind of clause or item that is supposed to be there.
I also have a peeve about people who write single sentences by breaking them up with a question mark.
That kind of writing? Is just wrong.
NO. This is not how that statement is written, regardless of the fact that you raise your tone and pause in the middle of the sentence. It is still a statement, not a question. The first half of the sentence is not a question and does not get a question mark. FUUUUUUUUU.
Unless of course there's something brilliantly fucked up about smartphones and internet as a whole on that side of the pond.
So nyah.
Most well-read people naturally pick up the general concepts of comma usage from exposure. The vast majority of "I think it goes here" commas are correct, even if you don't know why. Every now and then, I run across someone with total comma anarchy, and that is when everybody gets to hear the rant about clauses and lists.
One downside to these smooth, shiny, glass and metal phones? I can't replicate my old trick of typing messages without looking at my phone, which was well handy. Read message with a glance, type reply without looking, glance to ensure correct, send.
That word right there? That's my iPhone autocorrectly wrongly and me being too lazy to deal with the text editing controls. What the duck is accidbetly, and why didn't it chose accidentally instead?
Original use: "Lol I was in a passive 5 10 game last njgjt and some nit with a stars hoody folded utg and his cards accidbetly flipped up -he had 88.lol."