|
|
Seminars &
email courses
Texting,
Handwriting, and
Language
“Texting
can be detrimental to your professional health”
“Standards
of good writing evolve with changing technologies”
“Communication
becomes less nuanced with new technologies”
“Even
in the age of texting, handwriting has its place”
Also see
artificial intelligence, language, &
you.
Top
|
Seminars &
email courses
Texting can be detrimental to your
professional health
By Stephen Wilbers
Author of 1,000 columns
published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune & elsewhere
| I’d TILII
but CT cuz BIL so CWYL. Texting.
It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s here to stay – at least until technology
comes up with a more efficient means of producing text than fingers on
keyboards.
Compared with e-mail, texting is
Quicker.
Constant connectivity promotes a culture of "reachability," which
encourages users to check for messages more frequently and respond more
rapidly.
More discreet.
If you’re adept, you can text out of sight
– below a desk or table or behind a book, purse, or briefcase – without
breaking eye contact with the person you’re supposed to be listening to or
interacting with.
More portable and available.
Whereas it would violate social norms to
carry a laptop into a theater, sporting event, lecture, live performance,
or bathroom stall, handheld devices are easily concealed.
More concise and efficient.
Short Message Service (SMS) language is ultra concise, relying heavily on
abbreviations, initialisms (in which the letters are pronounced
individually, as with LOL for "Laughing Out Loud"), and acronyms (in which
the letters are pronounced like words, as with ACORN for "A Completely
Obsessive, Really Nutty" person and UPOD for "Under Promise, Over
Deliver," though in my experience OPUD is more common).
More direct and candid in tone.
Abbreviated, shorthand communication encourages a headlong,
straightforward TILII ("Tell It Like It Is") style that values personality
and emphasis over subtlety and substance.
More fun.
For younger users, texting feels like something they own, a medium they
can use to exclude older people.
One the negative side, texting is
More likely to be used at inappropriate
times. Because texting is so
easy, texters are tempted to fire off a message rather than wait for a
more appropriate time to communicate.
More likely to encourage inconsequential
communication and self-disclosure.
Short, quick exchanges in a social
networking environment create a culture of sharing information for the
sake of sharing, sometimes to the detriment of the user’s professional
standing or reputation, especially when, in the words of Lee Rainie
(Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project), a message "jumps
the wall" and private information becomes public.
More likely to be incomplete and
inadequate. Hurried creation of
text in severely limited space results in less detail and less carefully
developed thought.
More prone to typographical and
proofreading errors. Rapid-fire
exchanges diminish the likelihood of careful proofreading.
More likely to be incomprehensible or
misunderstood. Initialisms and
acronyms are not understood by everyone, and sometimes they have more than
one meaning, as with STD, which means both "Seal The Deal" and "Sexually
Transmitted Disease."
More likely to result in unacceptable
style and tone. Informality may
cause users to be blunt, undiplomatic, inappropriately casual, and
unprofessional in their word choice. Younger users and digital natives may
be less sensitive to the various levels of formality required in business
communication.
So, as I said, I’d tell it like it is,
but I can’t talk because the boss is listening, so I’ll chat with you
later. |
|
Top
|
Seminars &
email courses
Standards of good writing evolve with changing
technologies
By Stephen Wilbers
Author of 1,000 columns
published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune & elsewhere
|
The
times, they are a changing. These days when I write, my big fat thumbs
keep hitting the wrong little keys on this handheld device. How annoying.
And yet how miraculous. I can
communicate instantaneously with people around the planet from this
granite boulder on the shore of Lake Superior or from this dock in north
central Wisconsin or from this car careening down the freeway while other
drivers scatter in all directions. (Just kidding, my wife is at the
wheel.)
Still, it tries my patience. So being an
adaptable Darwinian creature, I alter my approach. I tap the icon for
voice recognition, and I spelt out an entire paragraph, and when I say
"comma" or "." or even "open quotes" and "close quotes," it knows what I
mean (or with this particular device, "she" knows what I mean).
Even so, I have to go back and make
corrections, in this case cutting spelt and thumbing in spout,
which is what I said, and changing "." to "period." Impressive though
imperfect.
But what really gives me pause (to use
an outdated but stately expression) – what really blows my mind (moving
all the way forward to the sixties) – what stresses me to the max (hippest
style I can muster at the moment) – is that this dazzling technology is
altering my habits and in subtle, disturbing ways challenging my
assumptions about what constitutes good writing.
Especially in my personal, informal
correspondence, where I’ve noticed a growing reluctance to go back and
make little corrections, such as changing dad to Dad when I
use the relationship as a name, or to add the missing hyphen in compound
verbs such as to spot-check, or to remove it when it isn’t needed,
as in to sign-on.
After all, if the goal is to communicate
clearly, quickly, and conveniently and these minor departures from
standard English don’t interfere with that goal, does it matter? Why
bother with capital letters, correct spelling, and punctuation as long as
you’re meaning is clear.
Didn’t you understand the previous
sentence despite the use of you’re in place of your and the
missing question mark?
One of the best answers I’ve seen is a
July 20, 2012, Harvard Business Review blog by Kyle Wiens, who opens his
post with this unforgettable line: "If you think an apostrophe was one of
the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me."
Why not?
Wiens reasoning (oops, I forgot my
apostrophe) boils down to three arguments: Good grammar is linked to
credibility ("especially on the internet"), someone who needs "more than
20 years" to learn the fundamentals of language is a slow learner, and
people who are good with the details of language are likely to "make fewer
mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing –
like stocking shelves or labeling parts." Or as Wiens also points out,
writing programming code.
In my writing seminars I take it one
step further. Careful writing leads to careful thinking.
So the times, they are a changing . . .
but are they? |
|
|
Seminars &
email courses
Communication becomes less nuanced with new
technologies
By Stephen Wilbers
Author of 1,000 columns
published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune & elsewhere
| "Heading
home, pookie. See you soon!" And
with that message, I crossed a line. My lifelong commitment to correct
grammar – and with it my relentless pursuit of precise communication – had
been compromised. I knew it would happen, but I thought it would take
another year or two. I never thought it would happen so soon.
I had spelled pookie with a lower
case p. I had used lower case rather than a capital letter for a
proper noun as English grammar requires.
It was a conscious decision. I had
deliberately if fleetingly decided not to bother changing the p to
P. I knew it was wrong, but I had done it anyway. I had placed
expediency above standards, convenience above pride.
I had begun my message innocently
enough. I had tapped the mic icon on my handheld device, and I had
dictated those fateful six words to my wife.
My device had correctly placed the comma
in the first sentence when I said "comma." It had correctly placed the
exclamation mark at the end of the second sentence when I said
"exclamation mark" even though I had hesitated to use an exclamation mark
there as I mulled over the advice of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, "Cut
out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at
your own joke," and as I considered Lynn Truss’s observation in Eats,
Shoots & Leaves, "There is only one thing more mortifying than having
an exclamation mark removed by an editor: an exclamation mark added in."
But I had chosen to use the exclamation
mark anyway. My choice was merely a peccadillo, a momentary lapse in good
taste, a minor departure from a normally disciplined and restrained style,
but the lower case letter . . . the lower case letter . . . that was
something else.
When I made my life-changing decision
not to capitalize the p in pookie, I hadn’t fully considered
the consequences. In that fleeting moment I had thought, Why bother?
She’ll understand my message despite the error. She might not even notice.
It’s not worth the time and trouble to make the correction. Even now as I
write this paragraph my face burns with shame, and as I reflect on the
implications of my choice a chill runs down my spine.
Here’s what I predict will happen next –
and soon – in this order:
□Punctuation
will begin to disappear. The first mark to go will be the comma. Rather
than writing, "Heading home, pookie," I’ll write "Heading home pookie."
□Abbreviated
spellings will become common. I’ll still spell rough with the
ugh, but I’ll drop the no-longer pronounced ugh from though
and I’ll write nite rather than
night.
□I’ll
begin using symbols and single letters in place of words, as in
r u ok.
And as these changes occur –
ineluctably and irreversibly – something I have possessed nearly from
birth will be fundamentally altered. The complexity, the nuance, the
beauty, and the mystery of language will be lost to me. |
|
Top
|
Seminars &
email courses
Even in the age of texting, handwriting has
its place
By Stephen Wilbers
Author of 1,000 columns
published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune & elsewhere
| In response to my
column about how texting is changing the way we communicate, Karen writes
that she too used to worry that something might be lost:
"Then I came to the conclusion that texting
and informal email communications are like conversation. Conversation
doesn’t allow for first drafts, proofreading, and revisions, so I don’t
worry if I make a grammar mistake or if my word choice is not perfect. (Of
course I’ll never say ‘ain’t’ and ‘me and her went shopping,’ etc.) When I
text or send a quick informal email, I will sometimes drop commas and
abbreviate spellings – sometimes by mistake and sometimes on purpose in
the interest of time. But with formal emails, I will proofread and
revise."
And then Karen offers this reassurance:
"‘The complexity, the nuance, the beauty, and the mystery of language’
will never be lost in formal writing as long as formal writing exists and
we as a society are educated enough to value it."
In response to the same column, Will
urges me to "take on those who say that technology has obviated the need
for students to learn handwriting."
All right, here goes. Students need to
learn handwriting, even in this age of texting and keyboarding, because
forming the letters by hand – shaping and creating them – slows them down,
helps them think more clearly, brings them to a more intimate connection
with language, makes them feel more committed to their words, and helps
them remember what they’ve written.
Hmmm. I think I just lost half my
readers with that sentence. Particularly the younger ones. Allow me to
elaborate if I may (reverting to my early 1970s style).
I do believe that sensory experience
influences the way we think and remember, as Nicholas Carr argues in
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. There’s
something more real – and for many people, more satisfying – about the
tactile relationship of creating, editing, proofreading, and reading text
on paper than encountering it on screen. But . . .
But the mind adapts. When I first
learned to compose on the keyboard rather than type over what I had
written longhand, I had trouble matching my thoughts to my keystrokes, but
soon it felt natural. I’m writing this column now on the keyboard.
Creating, revising, and altering my text are far easier this way. Besides,
the image I’m creating more closely resembles what the reader will see.
After college my son tried using his grandmother’s red Royal Safari
typewriter because he thought it changed the way he wrote, but he soon
went back to his laptop. (I just googled "Royal Safari" to see if the
online images match my memory of the typewriter. They do.)
Still, I maintain something is lost with
processed language. Although online communication offers an extraordinary
array of resources, aids, and prompts for the creation and transmission of
text, I wonder if 100 years from now critics will conclude that the best
writers of the 21st century were those who first learned to
write longhand and then migrated to online communication. |
|
|
|