Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Time: 6:41 pm

The onset of online social sites and instant messaging has compelled users, particularly teenagers, to write more often. On these platforms, users are required to consider their target audience when suggesting an opinion. Ergo, users tend to employ simpler sentence structures which are easily comprehensible. At the same time, in a bid to cajole others to share their opinions, users are more sensitive to their audience, and thus, make an effort to expurgate content which would be offensive to their readers.

Scholars of the previous century, on the other hand, ostentatiously write long essays in a consequential manner in order to flaunt their level of education and knowledge. The bid to appear erudite has incited grandiloquent writing, which will indubitably be repugnant to readers. Writing’s true purposes, which are to convey messages and to persuade, are inevitably lost.

The inchoate “Twitter-y” writing style of the twenty-first century, I feel, does not preclude the existence of ‘true-blue English language’, but on the contrary, is a means to restoring the intention with which the language was first created. Status messages like “John is studying for exams =(“ and “John has passed his exams with flying colours =)” can clearly convey emotions in a way that is unachievable in plain conventional writing; these emoticons can serve to accentuate and bring the reader’s attention to the writer’s feeling at that particular point in time.

Critics of the modern style of writing are, in my opinion, being dogmatic and unreasonably resistant to the changes the new generation has proposed. There are no doubts that formal writing remains important. However when writing formally, one should keep in mind the true reasons for writing in the first place. The new literacy is able to value and appreciate this purpose. Perhaps, it is time for these antiquated ‘scholars’ to emancipate themselves from their insular sanctuary, and embrace the brave new world the next generation has shaped.