Based on the title of today’s post, you may be led to believe that this is going to be a rant on the demise of proper grammar. You may think that I’m about to admonish the rise of text talk, l33t speak, and Internet slang. But that’s not the case.
While I could certainly yammer at length about how the so-called e-generation has systematically degraded what we consider to be acceptable and proper English, that’s not the point of today’s grammar post. Instead, it’s more about how technology has evolved the way that our words (and punctuation) appear on the screen and on the printed page. There are different quotation marks, for example, but that’s only the beginning.
Two Spaces After Periods
Growing up, I was always taught that I should double-space after a period. This was meant to clearly signify the full stop and the subsequent beginning of a new sentence. The same rule was applied to the application of question marks and exclamation marks if they signaled the end of a sentence too.
In the earlier days of computers, this now archaic rule still carried through. Even up until my university days, I wrote essays where periods were followed by two spaces. Such is no longer the case. In all of my web writing, as well as writing I do offline for clients, the standard is a single space after a period. Realistically, I’m indifferent to the change and the single space has become second nature.
Indented Paragraphs
Much like the double-space after a period, this “rule” is likely a holdover from the days of mechanical typewriters. The first line of a paragraph would always be indented. And again, this held true for many of the papers I wrote in college.
Such is not at all the case when it comes to writing on the Internet. Every blog post I write here, every review I write elsewhere, every feature article I post online… they all do not have indented paragraphs. Instead, the paragraphs are simply separated by an empty line. I prefer this, as it is cleaner and easier on the eyes, though we still see indented paragraphs in many printed documents and manuscripts.
Hyphens and Dashes
A hyphen and a dash are not the same thing. You use a hyphen to connect two words, as would be the case with brother-in-law and four-thirds. An em dash is used to break up a thought, as would be the case with the following sentence: He ate everything on the plate–including all the fries–and he still hungered for more.
They may both be horizontal lines, but a dash is longer than a hyphen. In the days of a typewriter, a hyphen would be one stroke like this –, whereas a dash could be signified with two strokes like this --. That changed with the rise of word processors (and the Internet).
Nowadays, if you try to type --, the computer will likely automatically replace it with —. See the difference? Many people don’t and that’s why the distinction between the different punctuation marks (let’s not even get into different dashes) has become so murky.
Evolving with Technology
The English language continues to evolve. Older words are discarded. Newer words are invented. What was once deemed unacceptable is becoming the norm and the continuing growth of technology spurs that along too. Language is not a fixed entity, so we should all understand that grammar rules must too change with the times.
It might only be a matter of time before we get rid of capital letters altogether. After all, it was completely outside convention to use name formations like iPod and TechCrunch just a few short years ago.
I was never taught to use the double space at the end of a sentence. I have always been perplexed at where it came from. I also dislike the dash that is created by a computer because a lot of times I just want the shorter one. I believe the longer one looks odd.
The one thing I like is the no indent of a new paragraph. It is as you say cleaner, which is something that I like in reading something. It is easier to read faster without the indents, which leads to more enjoyable reading and I believe better understanding of the text overall.
Lastly, I do not believe that capital letters will go away, they have too much to do with emphasis and do accentuate the text.
I can’t be sure but I think the “double-space after a period” rule probably came from the typewriter formatting style.
Haha, I was taught in primary school to use the double spacing. We always had that setting where spaces are shown as dots and ‘enters’ (can’t think of the correct term) are marked with that funny P-like symbol.
I agree with what you have to say about indented paragraphs. One thing I’d like to see become the norm as well is using justified text. I find that often looks nicer than left aligned.
Personally, I always manually enter the em or en dash myself, but I’m a bit of a grammar geek. I use Option+- or Option+Shift+- when I’m on a Mac, and Alt+0150 or Alt+1051 on Windows.
I also agree with Ray on the capital letters. Taking your own example, words like iPod and TechCrunch would not be as easy to understand without capitals. ‘ipod’ is not too bad, but techcrunch looks really dull. Other compound words in brand names would also become difficult to read. This could lead to problems like we see in URLs, such as the infamous penisland (which the autocorrect on Mac OS X Lion chooses to correct to the more SFW version, pen island, interestingly).
In the sorter OED, lots of words now have lost their hyphens: girlfriend, ice cream, leapfrog, bumblebee, crybaby, pigeonhole, lowlife, upmarket, etc.
None of the words that you use as an example have I ever seen as a hyphenated word. I have never seen Ice Cream mashed together either with or without a hyphen. With my father being in the Navy I have lived in so many different geographic regions of the United States and seen a variety of spellings and pronunciations for words.
On another related topic, a great example of different people using different words for the same thing is the Hoagie, Sub, Grinder, Hero or PoBoy sandwich. Another popular one is Cola, Coke, Pop, Soda or a combination of them. I left Pepsi out of this analogy because I have never heard it used on a regular basis to describe a carbonated sugar beverage.
It is interesting to see here what others have seen where they live and have grown up using.
I’ve noticed that a lot of word pairs are becoming single words now. Two of the most prominent examples are cellphones and videogames, which I think should still be written as cell phones and video games, respectively.
So, maybe the hyphen is used more in British or International English. I think this hyphen thing is more of a style, which typically is changing from complex to simple over time. I remember clearly an American usage guide recommends girl-friend because if spelled girlfriend four consonants will occur in succession – rlfr, which the editor didn’t think is good.
That is very true Michael. The root is phone, the cell is a type of phone (adjective?) so I believe they should be separated. The same example applies to the video games.
I’m sure this can change over time if the two elements come to be perceived to have such closeness.
The concept of a space after a full stop, question mark, etc., was not even known to me until I started to type on a computer. Before that, I was used to writing with a pen all the time through school and I guess I just did what looked neat on paper. So in a strange way, my grammar actually improved after the internet!
-Jean
With the advent of new technology that automatically capitalizes letters at the beginning of a sentences and corrects spelling it’s probably only a matter of time before they are able to correct grammar. While programs such as Microsoft Word try to correct grammer, the suggestions are not always accurate.