Crystal on txtng and blogs at SfEP Conference

(The post formerly known as: "A blog a day keeps the sanity inspectors at bay")

Some people have suggested that blogging is the worst form of vanity publishing - unmoderated, unedited outpourings from all and sundry - but I'm pleased to report that two 'experts' this week have confirmed my view that blogging is an activity that's, so far, been underestimated as a communications technique.

Students of journalism may already be drafting their final year dissertations on "…The symbiotic relationships between bloggers and journalists…" [insert quasi-academic phraseology of your choice] but when a highly respected and serious academic says that of all the various forms of 'electronically mediated communication' (EMC), blogging looks set to have the greatest impact on the English Language, I'm happy to bow to his greater knowledge.

David Crystal, speaking at this week's Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) annual conference, gave an entertaining insight into the impact the World Wide Web is having on the English Language.

He was on to a winner with me from the start, because he's been studying how people behave when they communicate electronically - a topic that's been getting under my skin for quite some time. Why do some people get so snippy in chatrooms and newsgroups? Why do I feel nervous when an unknown correspondent emails with a cheery "Hi, X" instead of "Dear Ms…"? And why did one client accuse me of being 'brusque' when I thought I was 'saving time by getting straight to the point'? But enough of my anxieties…

DC started out by explaining that 'conversation' is so successful because you look at the other person while they're speaking and there's an element of 'simultaneous feedback'. The listener isn't passive; they're making gestures and helping the speaker to keep on flowing by 'offering corrections', that is, clues about how the recipient is reacting to what the speaker is saying.

He rightly pointed out that although we call it 'chat', that's not really what goes on in a chatroom or a newsgroup. He compared the chatroom to being at a party and trying to chip in on all the conversations that are going on around you. In real life, it's neither possible nor sensible; but in a chatroom (i.e. on-screen) you can do this - though it's a skill that some have yet to acquire.

For example, an interesting snippet from his research is that there's a limit to how many times you can bat an email back and forth before one or other of the readers loses the plot [tell me about it!]. Email programs helpfully 'frame' the replies for you, by flagging the previous comments down the left hand side of the message with a coloured line. But DC suggested people can only handle up to about six iterations before, in my case, I throw up my hands in despair and pick up the phone instead.

He didn't say anything about how this might affect people in newsgroups such as SfEPline [I guess he wanted to make it to the conference dinner without getting his shins kicked] but it's easy to see how some people get discombobulated by the multiple threads and iterations, and tempers start to fray.

All of which was in interesting diversion on the way to his main point (fair dues, he had a book to plug) which was that, contrary to 'popular opinion', the growth of EMC does not signal the ruination of English-as-we-know-it.

DC's book, txtng, aims to allay fears that the next generation will mangle the English Language to such a degree that us oldies will be cast out to the fringes of pedantry. Sensibly he points out that "You have to know how to spell before you can txt"; and that we've been using contractions and abbreviations to communicate for donkeys' years.

If 'txtng' is harmless, what then of 'blogging'?

Well, DC reckons that blogging could have the greatest impact on the English Language, because it's grass-roots opinion, unmoderated and unedited - a communications methodology we haven't seen since the Middle Ages. He's seen some amazing examples of English usage (and abusage) on his travels in cyberspace: "It's the written language in its most naked form". Of greatest interest are the blogs that pay little heed to the usual conventions - ungrammatical, lacking punctuation - and yet are still perfectly intelligible.

What does that tell us about the endless rounds of "should it be a comma or a semi-colon" that twitter away in an editor's brain? Well, another speaker at the SfEP Conference (Charlotte Brewer, talking about the Oxford English Dictionary) had plenty to say on that subject, but I'll have to leave that for a later post.

Suffice to say that my take on DC's presentation is that blogging isn't a waste of time. For me, at least, it's a way to flex my writing muscles without being bogged down with my clients' expectations. And I'm pleased to hear that it's also good for my mental health (according to Joanna Moorhead's article in Tuesday's Guardian; though I hasten to add I'm well aware my problems are as nothing compared to those of the folks she's writing about).

Thought for the day: "Blogging: 'syrup of figs' for the 21 Century."