The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall? (WaPo)
rach:
“The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere. One recent report, young Americans don’t write well. In a survey, Internet language — abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging — seeping into academic writing. But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death of the English sentence…Librarian of Congress James Billington, for one. “I see creeping inarticulateness,” he says, and the demise of the basic component of human communication: the sentence. This assault on the lowly — and mighty — sentence, he says, is symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history. Storytelling itself. The Internet revolution, Billington says, creates new possibilities for people to be in touch with others, but it could also lead to a gobbledygook language without sentences and punctuation and paragraphs — and with less understanding of the world and its meaning. ‘We are moving toward the language used by computer programmers and air traffic controllers,” he says. “Language as a method of instruction, not a portal into critical thinking.’”
Once kids stop being able to form coherent phrases, it does seem like a good time to reevaluate. But also, when our newspapers with complete sentences in them use words like “gobbledygook” to describe and prescribe solutions for a Gen-Y problem…really? Those crazy library hooligans, with their mucketymuck tomfoolery (insert cross body fist swing here).
But yes, bring sentences back pls.
I see what the writer’s getting at here, but at the end of the day, its language. It’s supposed to evolve and change, and while i honestly don’t think the sentence is anywhere near its death bed, i do think attempting to preserving a language into a single, definitive form, would be futile. Language alters to the needs of those who use it. Just as there remains a requirement for what you could dub “high quality” writing, there is also the need to have a written language that matches the fast pace - almost immediate - nature of modern communication.
