I have decided to write personal responses to the readings assigned in my Writing With Computers class. They will be titled and tagged “WWC response” with the appropriate number. This is the first one, so please comment if you feel something is missing or more clarification is needed. Critiques are appreciated.

Essay retrieved from http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/computerbad.html.

In the essay “How Computers Cause Bad Writing” — originally titled “Lessons from the Computer Writing Problems of Professionals” — Gerald Grow, PhD puts forth very compelling arguments that quality grade writing has dwindled due to the growing use of computers. The question arises, however, as to whether Dr. Grow’s arguments still hold merit two decades later. Do they?

As an English major living in a world of blogs and wikis, I can say that it’s a matter of concern that now extends past his five main points of over-editing opposed to revision, collaboration creating non-cohesive styles of prose, reusing old blocks of text without regard to new context, the problem of essays being too redundant or too cryptic, and the possibility of wandering off topic due to small screens creating lack of overview. Unsettling as these problems may be, the problem has grown even larger with the advent of text messaging. Desire for speedy texting has butchered the English language into a bloodied carcass that probably causes a lot of professors cry themselves to sleep at night.

(I would like to take this moment to state that I know my grammar is poor, so please forgive me if this appears hypocritical.)

There are freshmen entering college who can barely write at a middle school level. Their sentences are short, fragmented and choppy; they lack any knowledge of using appropriate future/present/past tenses; and what’s worse, they write as they talk. Or, to be more precise, they take rules for texting into rules for writing college grade papers and are actually shocked when they receive those D’s on their papers. I didn’t realize students actually did this until I edited my younger cousin’s first English 101 paper for her. She whined about the professor berating the entire class for their lack of grammar and punctuation and while I nodded in sympathy for her, in reality my sympathy went to the poor professor who had to read all of those papers.

As much as I love technology and this new Web 2.0 phenomenon (apologies if the term makes you spit venom) , I also see the battle that academia is losing with mass media and I mourn for the days when “U” was not a socially acceptable replacement for “you”.