Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

Internet writing is a distinct genre with its own goals, and to accomplish those goals successfully requires subtly tuned awareness of the full spectrum of the language.

When you lay a book down and come back to it, you expect all its ink to stay where you left it, but the only languages that stay unchanging are the dead ones. When you step away from a living language, or a network made of human beings, you don’t expect it to fall silent and still without you.