The 1% Advantage
How easy is it for you to read Tweets, status updates, blog posts, or emails?
i lyke too tok on teh web bkuz my bffs r on it
Did you understand that one sentence? I’m sure you did. But could you read it as quickly as you could every sentence that has followed it? Probably not.
A few days ago I had posted a Tweet stating that over a span of six months I had stopped paying attention to anyone that couldn’t spell without a decent amount of accuracy or use proper grammar when constructing their sentences. The Tweet was made the very same day I had posted an article stating that I would not be actively participating on Facebook because I wasn’t cool enough. Naturally the statement was a cover for something else entirely but, despite my frustration at the matter, I had decided it would be better to keep my mouth shut and leave the subject alone.
Unfortunately, within hours of both the Tweet and the Facebook resignation, my inbox was awash with hastily constructed messages containing an abhorrent number of spelling, grammar, and syntactical errors so blatantly obvious to the eye that even the young Helen Keller would be left dumbfounded if she were to somehow read them. This was the very reason that I’d decided to leave the social site behind. Messages with spelling of questionable quality and grammar styles that would give a 6 year-old pause started appearing, and I’d spend way too much time trying to decipher what was actually being said.
Being someone who works with a lot of people who are learning the English language, you’d think this wouldn’t be a problem, right? While I’m willing to give students of English a lot of rope to play with, native speakers of a language should be held to a higher standard.
Spleling Isnt Impotent Long As U Undarstend Me
A common argument for the lax spelling and grammar on the web is that such rigid linguistic structures are completely unnecessary so long as the other party understands the main message. So long as the topic of discussion is something as generic as choosing a restaurant or deciding what movie to rent, I might agree. However, in order to effectively communicate ideas across any medium that is rooted in written language, people need to know how to spell, how to construct a sentence properly, and how to change their language depending on the target audience.
“Curly Joe, at the behest of Bubble-Gum Tate, laughed derisively at the aged professor for accepting the challenge.”
“Curly Joe laughed at Professor Farnsworth.”
“That basketball playa laffed at farnsworth.”
The three sentences say essentially the same thing, but which would you rather see in an email or blog post? My guess would be the first or second because the third, while understandable, does not give the reader a positive opinion of the writer’s intelligence level.
Putting Our Best Foot Forward
I’ll be the first to admit that my language skills are not perfect. There are hundreds of posts on this very blog that will prove the point. However, while the clarity of the message is sometimes ambiguous, the spelling and grammar is checked and double-checked to ensure people don’t waste their time trying to translate a rough code consisting of phonetically spelled grunts that is supposed to pass as language.
It seems that ever since AOL joined the internet the effectiveness of digital communication has been decreasing. This isn’t to say that everyone must use the strict rules of their target language, however, by keeping the very basics in line we can ensure our message is better understood. On top of this, we can also ensure that young people are encouraged to use proper spelling, which will only help them in the future as they enter the workforce and contribute to the betterment of society … we hope.
That said, over the last few years I’ve started to avoid areas online where people’s language skills leave much to be desired. Unfortunately, this often means that it’s impossible to enjoy any of the more popular websites, but it does make for a more satisfying internet experience. I call it “The 1% Advantage” because, while 99% of the web is ignored, the remaining 1% offers the best bang for the buck … so to speak.
What’s your take on this? Is spelling and grammar important online? Do the classic rules of English restrict people from free expression? Am I just an ass for ignoring people who can’t communicate effectively in their native language? I’d love to know your thoughts on the matter.
Comments (4)
I agree. These people speak a totally different English than I do. I ran into one such site this morning when I was searching for a solution to a technical issue, and wondered to myself, ‘do people actually talk like this?’ It’s sad.
An interesting blog entry, lots to be inferred.
The English seems to be able to take a lot of abuse and still be somewhat comprehensible. I wonder if other languages are as malleable.
The behaviors you note seem to reflect the attention deficits that afflict so many people today. I mean how many people even write anything of any length that they review and revise several times like you have probably done on your mini essays. Their writings are purely brain dumps of whatever is on their mind at the moment. Then there is the impediment of the thumbpads that encourage shortcuts to bad spelling and shorthand substitutions.
The quality of content is in direct proportion to the quality of spelling and grammar. Which is to say, garbage in, garbage out. NULL content (well actually not an unknown value, in this case just the absence of value).
Frankly with the amount of information we have to process nowadays, there simply is no time to waste on crap content.
‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ … that’s an apt way to describe it
Perhaps this is why blogs have essentially gone by the wayside. People no longer want to invest the time to write anything that will be worth reading in a month’s time, so it’s much easier to simply hammer out a few dozen “words” on one of the many micro-blogging platforms.
Oh well. It’s no great loss. Like you said, we have too much information to process, and there’s no time for non-value content.
I love your post thank you