Here’s an interesting editorial about the devolving state of literacy in the modern, technological societies of our 21st century.
But I’ll save the critical examination of my profession for another column. Today, I want to talk about one of the byproducts of all this mediocrity. Today I want to talk about the all-out assault on the English language and the role technology plays in that unprovoked and dastardly attack. I especially want to talk about the ways dumbing down the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged as the status quo.
Any number of my acquaintances excuse the bad writing and atrocious punctuation that proliferates in e-mail by saying, in essence, “Well, at least people are writing again.” Horse droppings. People have never stopped writing, although it’s reaching a point where you wish a lot of them would.
I tend to disagree with most of the conclusions reached by the author of the above. Yes, literary standards are changing. Yes there is more mediocre writing flooding the market. But language is supposed to evolve. It has to evolve. It’s in the nature of the users for that to happen. Standards are critical if you want to reach any meaningful level of success in writing, but in an increasingly diverse and complex world, you tailor your language to your audience. As the number and type of audiences for various information palettes grows so does the range of the language. English has always been spoken differently by different groups. I don’t think the growth of mediocrity and the growth of the English language are that closely related.
Technology has opened up access to a vast range of niche audiences. Yes, I find many blogs boring and filled with what I consider to be junk information. But that just means I’m not the target audience for that blog. Some blogs have a target audience of only one – the author. If you are still reading this blog entry, you probably are the target audience for my blog. Blogs and other new technologies are changing the rules for writers and readers alike.
But when change does violence to the accepted standards of the king’s English and takes the mother tongue into the realm of the unfathomable, as does almost all jargon coming out of the technology and business worlds, it’s our job as keepers of the grail to drive it back into the dark little hole from whence it came.
Honestly, I think good writers make their own rules. If you write well, people will read it. Why overcomplicate things? We haven’t used the King’s English in decades and we don’t have a king. Readability is king. Yes, we have a societal issue with attention spans. We also have an issue with our education system in many school districts. Our national and personal values are largely in a state of flux, and the language flexes with the flux. Literacy is going to survive this new century though. There are plenty of crusaders left to make sure of that. And jargon has a useful place in the world.