AVOIDING CLARITY (COMMENT).

AVOIDING CLARITY (COMMENT). This earlier post quoted Orwell, who, while praising spoken English, acknowledged that when speaking English, “people of all social classes treat its grammar and syntax in a slovenly way.” Nathaniel commented on that post that he can’t text because it pains him to leave out capitalization and proper punctuation. I think that some texters are happy to leave out capitalization and proper punctuation. Without grammar, less precision of thought is required. Matthew Malady quotes Emory professor Mark Bauerlein, who says: “How nice to avoid question marks, commas, and periods accompanied by a capital letter, all of which signal specific and distinct expressions…An ellipsis… is also open and ambiguous enough to license the texter to skip details and clarifications.” Malady says”…when we want to be lazy, [ellipses] allow us to avoid thinking too much while crafting a message.”