Spelling and the internet

I blame television for a lot of the ills, writers and actors trying to play up to certain crowds rather than trying to educate and hold the line.

What ever happened to newpaper editors anyway? I'll bet that you cannot read a newspaper without finding errors in it, well only if you would be aware of the errors.

Internet use certainly does influence writing. One thing that really bothers me is the use of periods instead of hyphens in telephone numbers.

Perhaps laziness is a large part of Internet writing. Why would we need to use Gr8 instead of spelling out great? In the world of gigabytes, we don't.

By the way, an entire meaning can be changed if a person fails to capitalize the brand name of a product or use punctuation. Sometimes you just have to read between the lines and guess at what a person is saying.

I would rather see posts in ill form than not at all, but a shift key is really not hard to push down.

Spelling and grammar are primarily thought processes which improve with use. Regular practice makes more fluent writers. Association with anticipated readers makes for more careful editing of one's work, as everyone knows that credibility on the Net is directly related to the content and form of one's writing.

Notice how often reports of scams hinge upon the non-standard English in the ads.

For the last ten years I have corresponded frequently with two friends, one in high-tech and one in finance. Over that time the level of their writing has improved significantly.

With my former students I noticed the same effect, only of course in a shorter time frame. They quickly realized -- sometimes with some not-so-gentle prodding from me -- that their credibility was directly related to the care they put into their writing, and so they edited well.

The shortcuts and bad habits of writing don't usually last in an open forum such as this one: careless writers get ignored. After all, communicating with an audience is what writing is all about, and nobody wants to speak to empty air.

Click on the link below, then paste the URL of any web page and click enter.

Now ANYBODY can sound like Dell! (grin)

Scott

PS Don't copy the "http"

• The Dialectizer