Of course, human beings have always used language to judge and control one another.

Teaching grammar in a rigid, this-is-inherently-better-than-that way is irresponsible—and it can be dangerous.

We need to put to rest the idea that digital forms of writing pose a threat to overall writing ability.

Writing has a special place in our cultural commentary: Everybody thinks they are an expert, but only when it comes to seeing that things are getting worse—what some writing experts call grammar rants.

Instead of viewing e-communications as a cause of worry or harm, perhaps we might instead see the use of digital writing as yet another example of how humans find ingenious ways to make language, in all its systems and nuances, work in new contexts.

Plato took a look at writing itself—that odd, scribing technology emerging during his time—and sounded the alarm; in his work, Phaedrus, he expressed concern that writing might be dangerous because it could damage our ability to memorize and offered only the semblance of wisdom. Since Plato’s ancient worries, concerns have continued unabated. Education professor Harvey Daniels calls these moments language panics that “are as familiar a feature of the human chronicle as wars.”

In his article, “The Phenomenology of Error,” writing scholar Joseph Williams lists this history of fierce tirades against poor grammar and writing, but he also demonstrates that many “rules of grammar lack practical force.” Williams takes a clever approach to make his point. He repeatedly shows that people, including some famous writers who express strong views about specific writing errors, fail to notice such errors in their own writing. Williams states that we often do not see errors unless we look for them, and he makes this assertion directly about the way teachers read and criticize their own students’ writing. To further emphasize this point, Williams embeds 100 such errors in his own article and asks readers, mostly English teachers, how many they saw; doubtless, few noticed the vast majority of them.

If an error is on the page but no one sees it, is it really an error? Does it matter?

Real Rules: These “define what makes English English,” such, he says, as an article preceding a noun: the book, not book the. Social Rules: These “distinguish Standard English from nonstandard,” such as not using ain’t. Invented Rules: “Some grammarians have invented a handful of rules that they think we all should observe,” Williams writes, such as not splitting an infinitive: to quietly leave would thus be wrong to a purist.

In the journal Reading and Writing, another group of researchers studied the relationship between texting and grammar and found considerable inconsistency in writing patterns for different tasks and age groups, concluding that “parents and educators need not be concerned that children’s grammatical knowledge is being consistently or directly compromised when they make grammatical violations in their text messages.” A small study by writing researcher Michaela Cullington, in which she reviewed papers from a number of students, finds no examples of texting shortcuts in otherwise formal school writing.

“My students tell me that writing is something you do in class for a grade. All the other modes are talking.” Redefining what we mean by writing could help clarify some of these critiques.

ubiquitous

Quelling

inexorably

paradoxically

newfangled

Texting Ruins Students’ Grammar Skills

Scott Warnock