Our brains are having to adapt to reading from computer screens and tablets, and this means we are scanning rather than ingesting information. While the brain can cope with this change the trend can end up being threatening. This is because comprehension of information on the web is significantly less thorough than on the printed page. I find myself, overwhelmed with the amount I have to read, scanning news items and especially difficult, more technical articles, and then being unable to remember or explain to my wife what I read five minutes later. When you are reading a printed book you do so much more slowly than when you are reading a book on your i-pad.
The problem is the loss of syntax, especially on Twitter. An article in the Washington Post on April 7th 2014 quotes Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist, as saying that people are losing the ability to construct, and understand, difficult sentences. English departments in American universities are concerned that students can no longer read and comprehend the classics and writers like George Eliot and Henry James, famous for their command of the English language. A university professor of science whom we know says increasing numbers of university entrants are turning up unable to write an essay, use correct grammar or use any kind of extensive vocabulary.
One of the joys of life is reading a good book. It should be done in relaxed fashion and enjoyed. To have command of the wonderful English language is a joy and essential to making your ideas and feelings understood. Epicurus might have insisted that first you learn your language thoroughly: construction, grammar, tenses. Only when you have that buttoned up should you be allowed to play around with abbreviations etc. The reason? Our language is the glue of our society and culture. Once we no longer have that in common the nation falls apart.
The other day I a five year old brought me a book to read about fruit. It was written in West Indian dialect, and was intended to show that there is a wide variety of English dialects, presumably all of equal value. Apart from mango I had no idea what the various fruits were because the book used Jamaican words. “Does him good,” I hear you say! “Be broad minded!”. Well, yes, but I would like the 5 year old to master his own dialect and vocabulary first before tackling someone else’s . I’m sure Jamaicans in Jamaica feel the same way. Political correctness should only go so far.