Originally posted by TheDuckster
..The need for speed has quashed 'spelling and gramatical' context

OOPS.

A good command of the English language is not necessarily the best indicator of intelligence. It only means you are good at following directions and obeying rules.

Being able to speak a language well is an art form and it is sad that the English language is being butchered every which way and the art is being lost but speaking well is secondary when it comes to intelligence.

Almost all the great minds of the world and in history have been scientists, mathematicians and philosophers, not language experts and certainly not English Professors.

Hello out there. I'm new to ATS and am finding this place utterly fascinating.

This thread grabbed my attention because the negative (at least in my opinion) effects upon written language by the ever more swift transmission of that writing has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

I miss the day of the handwritten letter delivered by the postal service. And no, I'm not 150 years old.

In the days of pen-ink-and-paper personal communication people had a much better command of the language. Now, in that age of the instantaneously transmitted word care no longer has to be taken in one's composition. There seems to be more of a "disconnect" between the brain and the hand.

There is an interesting passage in Gadamer's Truth and Method in this regard:

"Letters...are an interesting intermediate phenomenon: a kind of written conversation that, as it were, stretches out the movement of talking at cross purposes and seeing each other's point. The art of writing letters consists in not letting what one says become a treatise on the subject but in making it acceptable to the correspondent. But on the other hand it also consists in preserving and fulfilling the standard of finality that everything stated in writing has. The time lapse between sending a letter and receiving an answer is not just an external factor, but gives this form of communication its special nature as a particular form of writing. So we note that speeding up the post has not improved this form of communication but, on the contrary, has led to a decline in the art of letter writing."

Another good work on how technology has affected language is Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing, by Michael Heim. This book was written in 1989 and deals with how language changed with the advent of first the typewriter and then the word processor. Email was just a bit more than a glimmer on the horizon, not to mention IRC, IM and TXT.

Also, it was nice to see that someone else out theres take pleasure in the use of a fountain pen.

Thanks.

For the people who object to any word coming to refer to something that no dictionary has yet noticed that word referring to:

HAIL TO THEE, O ENGLISH USAGE PURIST
by Kate Gladstone

(tune: "The Irish Rover")

People say the English tongue
Is coming quite unsprung,
When words get new meanings, lose the ones they had.
Check the Oxford Dictionary,
And you'll find this isn't scary,
Degenerate, or new, or even bad.

In the days of Chaucer, once
You called your friend a DUNCE,
And meant he was a high-class intellectual:
But if you called somebody NICE,
What you meant, to be precise,
Was to label him as dim and ineffectual.

CHORUS: They lament what we've done
To the old mother tongue,
Howling "crime" and claiming multitudes misuse it ...
If they'd practice what they preach,
They'd speak eight-hundred-year-old speech ...
If they won't, they shouldn't say that we abuse it.

If you call word-changes bad,
And you say they make you SAD --
This, eight hundred years ago, meant down-to-earth ...
If all usage must be old,
Then STARVE is "die of cold,"
And AMUSED is "stunned," instead of "touched by mirth".

NAUGHTY now means nothing much --
An infant's prank or such --
But long ago in Chaucer's day medieval,
Or even Shakespeare's time,
It meant "hostile", "prone to crime",
"Worthless" (morally, or otherwise), and "evil."

CHORUS:

If you call a girl a HUSSY,
And she gets all mean and fussy,
Say you haven't cast aspersions on her life,
Tell her that your speech is pure,
And she therefore should be sure
That you meant -- like men of old -- she's a "housewife."

Find an English-usage smarty
And invite him to a party.
Offer POISON. He will think you've lost your mind.
You should whine and act offended
That your friendship now is ended,
Like the former meaning: "drink of any kind."

CHORUS:

He'll call your behavior AWFUL.
As a compliment it's lawful
To accept this, for as such it has no flaw --
If words mustn't ever change
To new meanings, it's not strange
That he kindly found his host "inspiring awe."

If they call me SILLY, I'll
Just bow my head and smile --
For this once meant "holy," also "full of joy" --
So this word you surely may
Use of anyone today
Whose devotion to old meanings might annoy.

CHORUS:

[L'envoi:]
I hope you liked this song,
And you didn't find it long --
Call it PRETTY and I'll know just how you feel:
If changed meanings are obscene,
"Crafty's" all that word may mean,
And the meaning of "attractive" can't be real!