Language barbarians or liberators?
E-mail writers invoke the ire of purists
Monday, April 3, 2000
By MARTHA IRVINE
The Associated Press
CHICAGO -- If you've recieved e-mail that loks like this
... you'r NOT alone !!!!!!!!! :)
Experts say people who communicate via computer are becoming
increasingly informal -- and sloppy. E-mail is routinely strewn with
typos, grammatical errors, and various shortcuts, such as no capital
letters.
The trend -- as relaxed as the Silicon Valley dress code --
really bugs some grammar purists.
"Students wouldn't walk into a professor's office asking a
question using bad English. Why would they send me that kind of
mistake in an e-mail?" asks Kenneth Brown, an assistant
professor at the University of Iowa business school.
An avid tracker of e-mail etiquette, Brown says he regularly
chides students for sending sloppy e-mail to him and even to
prospective employers. Some faculty members have also gotten a
talking to.
Shonquis Moreno, a 28-year-old writer from New York with a
penchant for lower-case letters, says she likes the "more
intimate, casual, off-the-cuff tenor" her e-mail has. In many cases,
she has even stopped fixing jumbled letters.
"Maybe it's because I know that typos are recognizable as typos
and not spelling errors," says Moreno, who works for an Internet
startup and finds herself scurrying to answer more than 30 e-mails a
day.
By the end of last year, there were 335 million e-mailboxes --
more than one per person -- in the United States, says the trade
publication Messaging Online. That represents a 73 percent leap in
just one year.
Internet experts say the advent of instant messages -- real-time
conversations -- has only heightened the casual, abbreviated
nature of online chats. But even they warn against
misspellings and grammatical goofs.
On the Web, "you won't be judged by the color of your skin, eyes,
or hair, your weight, your age, or your clothing," author Virginia
Shea says in her rules of Netiquette, which are posted online. "You
will, however, be judged by the quality of your writing."
The solution? Re-read your e-mail, not just for mistakes but for
impetuous words, says Eric Arnum, editor of Messaging Online.
"If you type faster than you think, there's a danger your words
will do more than offend schoolmarms," he says, pointing to the
recent use of e-mail as evidence in the antitrust case against
Microsoft.
When asked about e-mail's informality, everyday computer users
can be opinionated.
Jeff Rubin, a newsletter publisher in Pinole, Calif., says
computer communication has become a "forum for people who cannot
spell or string 10 words together."
"I have a friend who has a daily, paid-subscriber e-mail message
with circulation exceeding 500," Rubin says. "He misspells words in
each transmission. It's embarrassing."
Others rave about the ease that e-mail has brought to
communication.
Now a student getting her master's degree in Internet strategy,
Cincinnati resident Carol Boyd says she was relieved to escape the
"legendary one-page memo" she spent years perfecting during her
nearly 30 years at Procter & Gamble.
"Communication is less disciplined, but oh! What a timesaver!"
Boyd says. "It's amazing what my teacher can convey in a one-word
e-mail that simply says, 'Cool.' "
Even Brown -- who uses ellipses in some communication -- says
some shortcuts can create an air of informality that is
perfectly acceptable, provided that the person he is writing to
understands it. He still tells students to err on the side of good
grammar and spelling.
"It's their calling card," Brown says. "It's how people judge
them."
Copyright © 2000
Bergen Record Corp.
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