Can U Read This?
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman lamented the loss of our ability to read due to our over-exposure to television. His concern was that reading requires a linear logic that is essential to rational thinking and that television’s non-linear logic was training us to be silly, not serious thinkers.
Camille Paglia’s response, in a lovely Harper’s article featuring a dinner time conversation between her and Postman, was that television was much more like the real world than books. As she pointed out, you walk out of a building and a piano can fall on your head. Real life, she argues is non-linear and thus television prepares us better for it than books.
Similar to the Paglia-Postman debate is the current discussion over the effects instant messaging and text messaging is having on our ability to write. With limited space to write, quick back and forth communication, and (in the case of text messaging) a small keyboard, these new modes of communication encourage us to abbreviate words. “You” becomes “u” and “thank you” becomes “ty,” which generally get an “np” in response (“no problem”).
But is this really a problem? Clearly, the new way to write is more efficient, while still conveying the full extent of the writer’s thinking. And given the need for immediacy when exchanging information, especially at the office, quicker is in many ways better.
But what happens when this style of writing makes it 2 the newspaper or the resume? Will we judge the writer poorly? Will we b able 2 even read it? What impact will this have on literacy, especially inter-generational literacy?
It has been said that rules of grammar, such as not ending sentences with prepositions, were created by the upper classes to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. In today’s age, fluency in IM speak may privilege some over others with respect to functional literacy. Will this turn the hierarchy of good grammar as it relates to social class on its head? I wonder.
The bottom line is, can u read this? Are u able 2 communicate n the digital age? Will u b able to understand ur kids? If u are hip to the new writing lingo, it will be np, imho. TTFN. I m sure I will bbl to write more on this.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Thanks, Alan, for posting on the recent research that was overseen by Dr. Dennis Johnson and produced in conjunction with Capitol Advantage. I appreciate your support for our methodology.
I would like to add an important point: some of the practices by the vendors themselves have contributed to some congressional offices deciding to throw up additional requirements on their Web sites. When an office requires a phone number, there are legitimate reasons to ask for that information. Those reasons might include a staffer wanting to be able to contact the constituent directly and/or trying to determine if the message sender resides in the congressional district. Likewise, Capitol Advantage’s system supports that request. We don’t provide false information. But that is standard practice for a number of the vendors in this space.
And you can see why congressional staff starts to question the legitimacy of email communications that they receive if the information they receive isn’t accurate. I’m not saying that the onus rests entirely on the vendor coalition, but we do bear some responsibility. A good starting point in our negotiations with Congress would be agreeing — as an industry — that we will not provide false information. Communicating with Congress should be a two-way street. I think one of the points where we perhaps disagree is WHY Congress is adopting these new requirements. Your blog entry implies that Congress is doing this to block constituent communications. In fact, according to the Congressional Management Foundation, the real reason offices are doing this is to help them with the administrative burden of answering this new inflow of e-mail.
Further, we have always supported the notion of additional funding for staff to deal with the increase in constituent communications. And we think it would be great if the House and Senate would adopt uniform standards for online communications. But Congress rarely works in concert and funding is getting tighter with increased budget limits. So Capitol Advantage plays with the hand we are dealt. Our research shows that we are doing the best job of providing the services that our customers pay for — delivering legitimate email communications to the most congressional offices. And that will continue to be our emphasis. Because advocacy should never be an afterthought.
Sincerely,
Bob Hansan
President, Capitol Advantage