Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Emoji Are Ruining Grasp of English, Says Dumbest Language Story of the Week

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

To put Geoffrey Pullum's cogent argument into a nutshell: " Haven't these hyperbole-mongers noticed that young people today write to each other more than young people have ever done in all of human history? Their texting, tweeting, WhatsApping, Snapchatting, Facebooking, and Instagramming may have psychological downsides (like cyber-bullying), but dropping the occasional pictographs into their prose is not going to strip them of the capacity to form sentences. Anyone who believes emoji are having even the slightest effect on English syntax is an utter 🤡." Also worth nothing, because this dumb headline came to us courtesy of traditional print media: "it's survey-takers working for a company that just happens to host thousands of brush-up-your-grammar videos!" Ah, the incorruptible press.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 20, 2024 01:44 a.m.

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