In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynn Truss writes the following about computer-mediated communication:

What to call the language generated by this new form of communication? Netspeak? Weblish? Whatever you call it, linguists are generally excited by it. Naomi Baron has called Netspeak an “emerging language centaur — part speech, part writing” and David Crystal says computer-mediated language is a genuine “third medium.” But I don’t know. Remember that thing Truman Capote said years ago about Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing, it’s typing”? I keep thinking that what we do now, with this medium of instant delivery, isn’t writing, and doesn’t even qualify as typing either: it’s just sending. What did you do today? Sent a lot of stuff. (Truss, 2003, pp. 191-192)

Truss’s book is an interesting anomaly: a twenty-first century #1 bestseller on . . . punctuation? Reads the slipcover, “Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now ‘txt msgs,’ we have made proper punctuation an endangered species.” The examples in the book, however, suggest that the Internet may have little to do with poor usage proliferating on billboards, shop signs, and the like (although it may have a good deal to do with priming the public for a book on punctuation).

This week’s readings take up the question of how computer-based forms of writing may be modifying language, and whether or not literacy educators need to be concerned.