Feature

The Internet and the English Language

by Terence Carter

With English as the language of choice for the Internet and the abundance of new users — "newbies" in the parlance of the Internet savvy — rushing online in droves, it would not be unreasonable, but perhaps expected, to see a trend toward improved writing skills. Despite the number of people and amount of time spent online, the expected English Renaissance has yet to arrive; just as devouring a box of cookies does not constitute a proper meal, the vacuous activities that take place online neither lend themselves to the improvement of the English language nor to its correct usage. Instead, it seems that English is starting to suffer at the hands of young, impressionable, shiftless, or uninterested Internet users.

I once knew a woman who could type at alarming speed — probably typing upwards of 80 words per minute. I watched her complete page after page of documentation for a program that her office was developing. Each completed page was assiduously checked for errors by one of her colleagues; none were found. She was obviously a person who had complete mastery of a keyboard, and excellent writing skills. At a later date, I received an e-mail from her asking me to repair a machine whose hard disk had failed. The e-mail was rife with net-jargon and acronyms, right down to the "cul8r" — see you later — with which she signed off.

—-
terry:
how R U?
i hope things OK. System crashed yesterday, possibly fried HDD. if you could, please swing by the office tonight to fix it.
thx!
cul8r
-cp
—

It was clear to me that the care she took in her work did not extend to her e-mail communication, even when the communiqué was business-related. Possibly, she felt that it was acceptable to take such short cuts in her e-mail, because, it seems everyone else does. But I do not believe that conformity is the main culprit for lackluster writing skills in Internet communications. The nature of the medium and the environment it creates also plays a role.

Evolution or Devolution?

The Internet — extolled as one of the greatest inventions ever developed — enables users to disseminate and deliver information quickly and inexpensively, express unrestricted and uncensored ideas, and instantly transmit electronic files and documents.

Though few people today know what the Internet is really about (in fact, its use is being defined daily), everyone wants access to it. In its earliest incarnation, the Internet was a tool for the exclusive use of government, and educational and scientific communities. The ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) was developed in 1969 by the American Department of Defense as a test of the viability of computer networking, and has grown to be an indispensable tool, resource, and toy to millions of people world wide. What once consisted of only 15 nodes and 23 host computers has swelled to over 19.5 million hosts, 1 million web sites, and 71,000 newsgroups.

The original tool was spartan in nature and difficult to use. No graphical interfaces existed; all functions were entered by command line. The syntax of these programs was often cryptic and difficult for a layperson to understand.

More recent developments have seen widespread use of e-mail and IRC (Internet Relay Chat, or "Chat Rooms"), and the creation of web pages dealing with every imaginable topic. In almost all cases, the target audience is reached instantly whether it is one person across town (via e-mail) or a large group of users scattered across the globe (via an IRC room). Communication between users tends to be fast paced, as users try to contend with the rush of incoming information in real-time. This increased pressure to receive, process, and react to information on the fly often results in responses that are, in general, curt or short in nature; smaller words are preferred over longer, more difficult to spell synonyms and abbreviations creep into the structure of the sentences. All finesse is omitted in the interest of saving time. The utilitarian and pared down language of Net communication actually resembles the precise, rigid syntax of the command lines of ARPANET, the Net's predecessor. If you have ever attempted to carry on a conversation in an IRC room, you are familiar with the phenomenon.

In Praise of Words

Although the mode of communication on the Net is based on the written word, the tenor of the communication is closer to verbal interaction. Moreover, the timbre of the communication between participants often resembles that of two close friends, even between total strangers. Net users tend to "speak" in a loose and informal tone; their word choice is often colloquial and diction tends to be poor. For a medium that relies on words to convey meaning, it is strange to see that these words are the very things some in the Internet community seem to hold in contempt. It appears that the average Internet user feels that words somehow impede his or her task of communicating thoughts. Users assume that the excision of the majority of words will have no impact upon their target audience's ability to understand the message.

Seemingly terrified of using whole words and complete sentences, Internet users have taken the art of the stenographer's shorthand and mutated it into something that deviated from its original purpose: to transcribe the spoken or dictated word at a natural talking speed onto paper pending translation into proper English. A variation of stenography has almost become the standard lingo for the transmission of information on the Net. Using these notations to constitute a finished piece of work shows a certain amount of disrespect to the recipient of the communication. In essence, the author of the letter is implying that although he or she did not have time to write the message in proper English, the bare-bones, scalped down, jargon-filled version will suffice.

Traditional secretarial contractions and acronyms such as wrt (with respect to) now share the stage with freshly minted expressions and a host of trite acronyms such as <g> (for grin), LOL (laughing out loud), or TTYL (type to you later) in an attempt to add human warmth and personality to otherwise utilitarian text. This attempt is laudable, even understandable; however, such humanity and emotion can be added to writing by the use of words. The use of these expressions, coupled with the penchant of users to omit most standard conventions of the English language, namely punctuation, spelling, syntax, and capitalization, often makes what they write difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend.

The "Invisible Person" Syndrome

The state of writing in Internet communications may also be due to what can be called the "invisible person" syndrome. Accountability breeds meticulousness, while anonymity breeds indolence. Because poorer grade writing skills are the accepted "standard" of the Net communications, people may consider it an excuse, or an incentive, to be less conscientious about espied petty issues such as grammar and spelling. In addition, the perceived anonymity of users on the Net begs the question why strive for perfection in the English language when no one knows or cares who you are? Conversely, who wants to be singled out for doing shoddy work? These people may be surprised to learn that most users can be traced back to their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) while online by anyone who takes the time to do so. Because Internet communications are the only source from which the online community can derive an impression of any user, that impression is directly related to the language, tone, and structure employed by the person in question.

Training and Tools

A lack of training in the use of, and knowledge about, Internet tools may also contribute to the nature of Internet communications. Consider that the naval explorers of old who struck out into the unknown reaches of the Atlantic in order to discover new lands did not have maps of the regions into which they were sailing, but instead had experience in naval navigation, knowledge of traversing rough seas, and seasoned, experienced crews at their disposal. The modern explorer of the Internet is set adrift upon a vast sea of information without the knowledge of, or experience with, the tools at his or her disposal. Such people may (understandably) seek to cut corners in areas in which they have some mastery (English language), so that more time can be spent learning about areas in which they are less skilled (the Internet).

Spelling and grammar checkers, while useful tools, breed sloth and are not without flaws. They detect words as being misspelled by doing a comparison against the program's word libraries. Therefore, words that are not present in the library are flagged as being misspelled. Such words must either be corrected, or must be added manually to the software's permanent word repository. The lazy often add all such flagged words, the result being a useless data library filled with incorrectly spelled words. Such programs also do not identify words used improperly or out of context. Homonyms are often overlooked to the amusement of a letter's recipient, and to the chagrin of the letter's author.

All Things Must Change

As new technologies become part of everyday life, it only makes sense that the language change as well. The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought many new words into the English vernacular. The turn of the century brought many more. Just as a medieval chariot became carriage, then horseless carriage, and finally car, so too have words and concepts that were formerly the exclusive bailiwick of computer scientists and other technical professionals entered the layperson's dictionary of common words. This absorption of technical words into the language has resulted in some meanings becoming skewed. In everyday conversations unrelated to computer technology you might hear people talking about "being online" or needing "down time," things "crashing" and machinery "booting." The more terms are incorrectly used, the more the skewed meanings of the words gain legitimacy.

In the end, the most common usage of words and expressions win out, and the English language and the way we use it will be altered to incorporate them. This is how language evolves. Hopefully, the new words and meaning that are constructed will adequately describe the concepts necessary for effective communication. For the time being, brevity should always be secondary to precision and clarity.

It is plain that Internet communication has its own set of rules: rules that do not follow the standards of good English. What is not yet known is whether this is an evolution of the language, or merely a phase that must be endured until the medium evolves, and finds its own voice. Only when a comfortable medium between today's "net-speak" and standard English is reached, can we hope to see any substantial positive changes in the English language.

Terence Carter is a computer technician who works in Ottawa, Canada.