The Internet Is Not Ruining Grammar
Language has always evolved, and curmudgeons have always whined about it
Millennials catch a lot of flak — for their selfies, their avocado toast, and their unconventional spelling. I work at a university, and I can’t go a week without hearing someone complain about how the internet has corrupted English.
“Nobody cares about proofreading anymore,” one professor told me a few days ago. “Smartphones have ruined our students.”
Young people’s grammar is practically the only thing you can get faculty to agree on these days. “Oh, they can’t spell or punctuate at all,” I hear. It’s the ultimate echo chamber.
Young people’s grammar is practically the only thing you can get faculty to agree on these days.
Grammarians have published hundreds of books and op-eds declaiming the end of language as we know it. All because of one evil technology. On top of that, I’ve gotten more than one email from Grammarly reps wanting me to adopt their app for my classroom. They promise to magically remove errors from my students’ writing.
But not so fast. What if I want them to make “errors”? What if I want them to play around with language?
