I have heard a lot of complaints from people in recent years about how today’s technology makes people dumber. The big one is that misspelling and LOL-style language used in text messaging and IM dumbs people’s writing skills. I have always dismissed this. I think that, in general, technology has made us smarter. And I think that writing is improved by many things including creativity and access to information which are both possible through text and IM as they are anywhere else.
Still, would I go so far as to say that a tool like Twitter can actually improve our writing? It’s an idea that I started thinking more about after reading this great article on Copyblogger about how Twitter improves writing by forcing you to be more concise, more creative with your vocabulary and more capable of editing your own words. I hadn’t thought of it that way and found the possibilities to be intriguing.
After thinking about this, I started doing some research into what others online have to say about the topic. There are a lot of people online who have said that Twitter is dumbing us down but there’s some compelling evidence to suggest that it may be true that Twitter improves our writing. It certainly improves our ability to market our writing. But it also looks like it may have the potential to improve the writing of students and may even help to better legal writing.
Ultimately I think that Twitter, like all technology, is a tool that will be used differently by different people. Creative folks will learn to better themselves through its use and the rest of the users will simply enjoy it for its entertainment value. It is neither bad nor good but what we make of it.
Does Twitter Improve Writing? has 4 Comments
Support me with Flattr!
March 29th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Hi and thanks for the link to Write for Your Life.
Your last sentence there absolutely sums it up for me. I don’t see the point in complaining about dumbing down or how useless a piece of new technology is. If you try it and it doesn’t work for you, move on and find something that does. If it works for others, what’s the problem?
Twitter has caught on because people have enjoyed and found a way of using it that they find find constructive. It’s the same for writers. Like I say, your last sentence sums up it up perfectly.
Stephen Fry wrote and read a fantastic article about language on his blog recently, well worth checking out!
March 29th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
[...] I’ve been reading a lot of articles online by people who believe that Twitter can improve their writing. It’s an interesting idea and goes to show that technology tools [...]
April 17th, 2009 at 7:06 am
[...] certainly a tool that is used to promote blogs. We’ve seen other articles that suggest that Twitter even may make people better bloggers or writers. But it’s also true that there is only so much time in the day so is it possible [...]
April 14th, 2012 at 5:07 am
I’m amazed, I need to say. Really seldom do I go through a blog that’s both educative and amusing, and without a doubt, you have hit the nail on the head. Your thought is definitely outstanding; the issue is whatever inadequate people are talking intelligently about. Now i’m very happy that found this within my try to find something relating to this.