The degradation of the English language on the Internet

[spoonish]

well, butchering or not, its helping evolve the english language.. shakespeare himself invented tens of thousands of words, and spelled the same word in many different ways, but we don't see a huge fuss over him 'butchering' the language...

its just like australia though, innit... they've come up with words like 'fairdinkum'... I wouldn't call that a butchering of the language... although I would say that australian english should be considered a dialect of english... some of the terms they use took me a while to figure out...

 

[Viruzzo]

There is quite a difference between adding new words to the language, and mispelling/misusing those that are already there... And none of that excuses the improper use of punctuation and capitals.

 

[Random Argument Man]

If only we could score the internet...I'm not a pro in the English language. Actually, this is my second language. (First is french). I still have many troubles with both of them.

 

[Knolle]

It doesn't overtly concern me, since english isn't my native tongue either, but I think it's a rather bad habit. There's nothing to be gained from it, since typing weird abbreviations isn't much faster than writing complete sentences if you are actually any good at typing and/or able to create grammatically correct sentences.

And that is actually the crux of the issue, I presume.
I mean, people keep writing these half-assed sentences because they either can't be bothered or think it takes too long. And if it is such a bother in the first place, then abandoning any practice doesn't improve upon this issue now, does it?

Granted, I screw up my sentences and grammar all the time, since I tend to get distracted by whatever might come to my mind, but improving upon my written english actually helped me greatly with my spoken english too.

I just can't relate to why people do it. English isn't even a hard language. It's a bit of a shame.