Is Twitter Making Us Better Writers?

The limiting of language and thought to 140 characters has been bemoaned since Twitter became a "thing."   It's the butt of many jokes, despite the obvious and indisputable power it has proven to be in the realms of news reporting and marketing.

But could the popularization of Twitter be a watershed moment in the evolution of our language?

The major languages spoken around the world today are living languages, always evolving. We know that each generation of students has an increasingly difficult time understanding the works of Shakespeare, and even the documents and writings on which the foundation of this country (the United States) was built!  And though this is sad, it's not necessarily the students' fault.  The students are not more stupid than their predecessors, the material isn't any less relatable; it is just that the ways in which we speak have evolved since those times, making them difficult to follow.  I remember sitting in my high school history classes, reading primary documents and getting frustrated. "Why does this sentence never end?? Where was the subject of that sentence?? This one seems to end in the middle of a thought, for Christ's sake!"  It took a lot of work to unlock the key to reading such a verbose language style. The reason was that I trying to impose today's rules of proper writing on yesterday's literature.

Though language arts have largely been neglected in favor of STEM education (don't get me started there), today's English classes still teach certain style preferences: Sentences should not run on too long or contain more than one thought.  A strong sentence has a rigid structure of subject-verb-object, with one or two prepositional phrases thrown in for color, max.  We DIAGRAM sentences, for fuck's sake.  It is highly formulaic.

So it's no wonder our language has evolved to be shorter and more concise, and this is neither worse, nor better. It simply is.

Advanced students are also taught how to most effectively convey their thoughts, usually with use of the Golden Rule: "SHOW, don't tell."  We learn to use the active, rather than the passive voice.  We learn to get away from vague statements and to provide specifics details, to prove or demonstrate our claims. "Show me how the man felt when he saw his lover, don't just tell me he was sad!" yelled many a Creative Writing teacher.

Therefore, given today's rules of what "good" writing is - conciseness, specificity, directness - could Twitter actually be improving students' writing?

If you've ever read a paper written by an average high schooler, you probably know how much help they need in this department.  Thanks to what I told you not to get me started on earlier, the quality of writing - as judged by the ability to meet current standards of good writing - has drastically diminished in recent generations.  I teach an undergraduate science laboratory class and have encouraged an increased emphasis on writing even in these "practical" classes because students obviously aren't getting enough of it elsewhere. I was alarmed when I graded the very first white paper assignment from my students and felt that I was not in fact reading college-level work, but rather had somehow mixed up my stack of papers with that of a middle school science teacher! One of the largest problems in my students' writing has consistently been an inability to actually say anything.  I get the 2-3 pages I asked for, but there is only about a paragraph's worth of actual information.

We've taught our students to fill up space with words, without teaching them how to say anything.

I removed the page requirement and told my students for the next assignment that I didn't care how long it was; I cared about the content.  If they could tell me everything I needed to know in under a page - do it. What I got was again papers between 1 and 3 pages in length that still didn't convey clearly many of the main points.

Obviously, there was a problem.  There was no critical thinking going on in here; all I was getting was a regurgitation (and usually some bastardization) of what I had said in class or what was printed in the manuals in front of their faces.  Perhaps to some of you I seem harsh to say these were brain-dead papers with absolutely no thought gone into the structure, flow, or syntax and much less the actual implications of their work.  But I would remind you that most of these students were upperclassmen about to graduate from a premier institution of higher education in this country, and before you suggest it, none of them were science majors.

So what does all this have to do with Twitter?  My hypothesis is this: By forcing us to convey as much information, and as much feeling, attitude, and nuance as possible in 140 characters, maybe Twitter can help teach a generation how to communicate effectively by today's standards.  No one has time for the verbosity of the 18th century anymore, but it's much harder to say more in less time anyway.
I believe Twitter could have a profound influence on language.  It can improve the writing skills of today's youth by forcing them to be more concise, and it could also further the evolution of language towards a denser style.  Perhaps one day, our great-great-grandkids will have trouble reading the pleonastic works of today :)


Click below to watch Stephen Fry - one of the most effective communicators I've ever seen, with one of the largest vocabularies I've ever heard - talk about this same idea with the ever funny Craig Ferguson.

Troubled by Your Practices: A Letter to PNC Bank

My letter to PNC bank.  Please share and send one of your own.

To whom it may concern:

I am a relatively new PNC customer and chose to bank with PNC over other competitors out of convenience.  I have been very pleased with the services so far and have enjoyed being a PNC customer.  However, I recently discovered that despite the Green Commitment touted on your website and in customer communications, you lend a lot of money to companies involved in mountaintop removal coal mining.

As a native West Virginian, this is incredibly troubling to me and upon learning about this association, I immediately felt dirty and guilty about my ignorant choice to bank with you.  You cannot fund this destructive practice in good conscience.  Mountaintop removal (MTR) has buried over 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams, and has poisoned the wells that so many mountain communities depend on completely with toxins like lead and cadmium.  MTR is associated with degraded downstream water quality and the destruction of some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world.  Did you know that? Did you know that the forests of Appalachia are second only to the rain forest in biodiversity?  And did you know that the "reclamation" process performed by coal companies after they've leveled a mountain cannot regrow forests because the soil has been removed and the rocky moonscape has been seeded with invasive species of grass?  

I know all of this and more.  I know it because I grew up there, and I've been fighting against this practice that impoverishes and poisons humans unlucky enough to live near MTR sites since I was 16 years old.  I know because now I hold a degree in environmental studies and am almost done with my masters in environmental science.  

What I don't yet know is what kind of company you are.  Are you the kind of company that plays word games but has no moral fiber?  Last year, a representative of your bank said you no longer funded companies with a majority of their business tied to MTR, but that was an easy commitment to make, since no one's business is primarily MTR.  It's really not good enough.

You have to completely divest your company from this practice if you want to keep customers who are even half way informed about the environmental and human capital destruction this practice causes.   It's really in your best interest, because as long as the people of Appalachia are under the thumb of King Coal, they will never have enough money to put into your bank.

You have an opportunity to do what's right here, and I hope you are brave enough to take it.  If individuals like me can be brave enough to stand against injustices like MTR, then a big powerful company like you should be too.  If you prove to not be as brave as you need to be, you'll lose customers like me left and right.  And I'll lead the way.

Sincerely,

Nicole Holstein

West Virginian native, D.C. resident

Activist, Student, Marketing Professional