Re: [tlug] Paul Graham's Disagreement Hierarchy

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Josh Glover writes:

 > Stephen, have you perchance noticed any differences in the formal
 > writing style of your students that could possibly be attributed to
 > the influences of the web?

No.  Although that may simply mean that in the 15 years that I wasn't
teaching in the U.S., "Banana Slugs" have devo'ed to the level where
"Buckeyes" were back then.

 > I would imagine that "academic" papers (i.e. as undergraduates,
 > when they may well not give a damn about style) written by native
 > English speakers have changed quite a bit in the past five years or
 > so, as the Web Generation starts flowing into universities.

Well, I haven't been teaching very many native English speakers since
1992, and, sad to say, for academic purposes Japanese college students
are far worse writers in their native language than American students
are (even if they can spell better and identify SVO sentences more
accurately than Americans).

 > So no, web-style flaming is nothing new, but its influence on writing
 > in general is.

Interesting claim.  My gut reaction is that I don't think so; more
likely, web-style flaming is just the way people normally think/write,
it's just that there is no longer an editor/publisher to filter out
the really horrible stuff.  I haven't a clue how to go about testing
either hypothesis, though.