In a world where every nanosecond counts, you need to multitask, absorb information in a heartbeat, and make rapid-fire decisions. You need to be agile, nimble, quick.

You also need to know something people have known since the beginning of civilization: language.

To go beyond the plain and simple to the nuanced and complex, to go beyond 140 characters to carefully structured paragraphs that are logically arranged into a coherent whole, you need to slow down. You need to learn the basics.

For all the wonderful things they do, computers get in our way. They seduce us with their mind-boggling features and distract us from more important matters. Even as they empower us, they undermine our abilities.

In my estimation, we’re losing ground in the following areas. I invite you to prove me wrong.

1. Correct punctuation

Correct the errors in the following sentences:

1. Computers save us time, however, they also waste our time.

2. I love my job (especially my three weeks’ vacation.)

2. Word choice

Identify the correct word:

3. Our principal/principle concern is economic justice.

4. For their grand opening, they offered complementary/complimentary drinks.

3. Breadth in vocabulary

Give five synonyms for

5. False

6. Unremarkable

4. Sensitivity to appropriate level of formality

Rewrite the first sentence to make it less stilted, and the second to make it more formal:

7. It is my recommendation that we undertake a study of this issue.

8. We are looking to improve customer service.

5. Variety in sentence structure

9. Define a periodic sentence.

10. Restructure the first sentence of the third paragraph in this column to make it a loose sentence.

6. Coherent development

11. Name the three parts of a standard paragraph.

12. To connect your thought to a previous paragraph, open the next paragraph with what type of sentence?

Here are the answers:

1. Replace the comma after time with a period or a semicolon to correct the comma splice.

2. Move the period outside the closing parenthesis. (Three weeks’ vacation is correct.)

3. Principal

4. Complimentary

5. Erroneous, fabricated, contrived, spurious, specious, etc.

6. Ordinary, banal, mundane, pedestrian, quotidian, etc.

7. I recommend we study this issue.

8. We are committed or dedicated to improving customer service.

9. In a periodic sentence, a series of phrases or clauses appears before the main clause (unlike a loose sentence, in which a series of phrases or clauses appears after the main clause).

10. You need to slow down to go beyond . . . to go beyond . . .

11. Topic, development, resolution

12. With a transitional topic sentence, such as “Despite its many benefits, the computer undermines our relationship with language.”

My guess is if you’re 30 years old or younger, you scored six or lower, and if you’re 31 or older, you scored 7 or higher.

My first text message from my 13-month-old granddaughter!

“What does it mean?” my wife says.

Obviously, it means our granddaughter is a genius.

But it also means her relationship with language will differ fundamentally from that of anyone who grew up before the era of handheld devices.

It’s not that she isn’t encountering written language in books. She loves to “read” (that is, to turn the pages and look at the pictures and printed words as books are being read to her). On a typical day she’ll “read” several books before noon – sometimes, the same two or three books, four or five times each.

What distinguishes her experience from that of anyone who grew up in the pre-handheld device (or PHD) era is the captivating allure of something that plays music, shows videos, diverts the attention of her adoring parents away from her, and brings grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to her as miniature images that look and sound just like the real thing.

So what effect will these devices have on future generations of readers and writers? What effect are they having now?

The latter question is more easily answered.

As booklover David Ulin recounts in The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, even he falls prey to the “buzz” of the Internet as it pulls him away from reading The Great Gatsby with his 15-year-old son Noah.

For writers, handheld devices are making certain trends even more pronounced. Twelve years ago I identified six changes in our on-the-job writing:

1. Vocabulary is becoming more basic – rather than finish something, we’re more likely to get it done, and rather than return something, we’re more likely to give it back.

2. Sentences and paragraphs are becoming shorter.

3. Sentence structures are becoming simpler and less varied, with compound structures (“She was worried about declining profits, and so she decided to postpone buying new computers”) more prevalent than complex structures (“Because she was worried about declining profits, she decided to postpone buying new computers”).

4. Commas are being used less frequently, as in “My company like yours is watching its spending,” rather than “My company, like yours, is watching its spending.”

5. Typographical errors involving transposed letters (as in hte for the) are becoming less frequent.

6. Good writing is more likely to be associated with quickness and agility than with deliberate, nuanced expression.

So how will handheld devices affect future readers and writers?

No one knows for sure. But while we figure it out, let’s not let these devices prevent young people from developing a love of reading and an appreciation for the magic and beauty of language.

If you’re like me and you love holding a well-designed book in your hand, but you also love the way your e-reader defines words without interrupting the flow of a good story, you might think about the behavior you’re modeling for the children around you.