An Ode to Grammar

Does the internet negatively shape the literary minds of the masses? Would you agree that splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is becoming standard because of the global, grammatic influence of the net? Could it be that its isolated forums provide comfortable locals for casually reinforcing relaxed notions about writing that would otherwise be cast away under societal pressure?

Wikipedia is one internet local that reflects such a forum. After perusing a random articles, an act made easier by the convenient "random article" link on the site's homepage, the result was enough to make an editor sigh: the article about Xi'an Subway, a metro system in Shaanxi province of China, lacked commas and misused a word that I am unfamiliar with, approximatively. Many random articles follow this pattern. This reflects poorly on the authors of user driven content.

The dulled eye of the common internet user will lazily glaze past the same mistake time and time again. One error, the misuse of the word approximatively, survived six edits over the course of fourteen months. I put the poor "illegitimate" out of its misery today, finally changing it to its close cousin, approximately.

In locations where the typed word is less permanent, such as chat boxes and instant messengers, grammar is more horrible as misspellings and missing punctuation shove accurate writing to the wayside. Unless these inaccuracies are so egregious that other lax typists judge them illegible, any attempt to criticize ones lack of grammar is met with phrases such as: "this is the internet not school", "its a informal setting", or, more pointedly, "stfu".


This might not be so bad if people were learning and using grammar off line, but most people do not become proficient writers, ever. First-year English professors are used to the sub-par writing skills of their students. If online culture would reinforce proper writing, perhaps it may not create Pulitzer prize winners, but it may ease the burden of our professors. In addition, this increased proficiency might spill into the more permanent areas on the internet.

If you're reading this, consider exerting a little bit of grammatic pressure while you're on the internet. You never know, you might just keep an infinitive from splitting.