1414: Writing Skills

2014-08-31T07:26:37Z

EY: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1414
| date = August 29, 2014
| title = Writing Skills
| image = writing_skills.png
| titletext = I'd like to find a corpus of writing from children in a non-self-selected sample (e.g. handwritten letters to the president from everyone in the same teacher's 7th grade class every year)--and score the kids today versus the kids 20 years ago on various objective measures of writing quality. I've heard the idea that exposure to all this amateur peer practice is hurting us, but I'd bet on the generation that conducts the bulk of their social lives via the written word over the generation that occasionally wrote book reports and letters to grandma once a year, any day.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Much more is needed on the reason why the use of SMS should enhance the writing skills. The title text is also not mentioned.}}
[[Cueball]] and [[White Hat]] are discussing the positive and negative effects of young people writing on mobile phones in the vernacular of the day, {{w|Short Message Service}} (SMS) with lots of abbreviations.

SMS messages are one of the primary means of text communication on mobile devices, and are typically limited to 160 characters. Due to the limited space available on this and other messaging platforms, and also to decrease the time taken to write a message, {{w|SMS language}} (aka textese) developed as a form of short-hand writing. This involves the abbreviation and deliberate misspelling of words, and the use of acronyms.

Naturally, the use of this style of language has expanded into other areas, including those where brevity is not an issue, and this expansion and evolution of language is a subject of intense debate.
The main viewpoints on the subject are:

*Language is being negatively degraded by the use of text speak
*The use of text speak is a natural evolution of language

Cueball's point is that "practice makes perfect". Ability to form good grammar comes from practice through a lot of writing even when that writing is informal and hence the SMS generation get a lot of practice compared to the previous generations who communicated much more with speech, over the phone and in person, and may have written only a few letters a year. To foster talent for a major literary work we should encourage more practice even when that practice is through informal writing such as SMS.

{{w|James Joyce}} was an celebrated Irish novelist and poet, and his novel {{w|Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses}} is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature. It was criticized in some quarters for the frequent lack of punctuation and ungrammatical {{w|Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness}} narrative mode. In addition to his well known work, he wrote a number of love letters with extremely explicit content.

In the title text Randall wishes to prove Cueball's point by analyzing and comparing bulk volumes of texts (= a {{w|Text corpus|corpus}}) written by children today and 20 years ago. Randall favors todays children's writings for their everyday use of written word over situation in the past when children wrote only if forced to do so.

The title text's second sentence is particularly long and complex (compared to almost any other title text), which, generally, will score much higher score "on various objective measures of writing quality". Randall may hint that writing a lot of short title texts, like writing lot of SMSs, improve your general writing quality - hence, further strengthens Cueball's point.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are walking together, White Hat is holding a newspaper or report.]
:White Hat: Weird- Another study found that kids who use SMS abbreviations actually score ''higher'' on grammar and spelling tests.
:Cueball: Why on ''earth'' is that a suprise?

:[Cueball turns to White hat (who is now out side the frame. Inserted in the frame is a panel showing several kids throwing balls.]
:Cueball: Imagine kids suddenly start playing catch literally ''all the time''. Everywhere they go, they throw balls back and forth, toss them in the air, and hurl them at trees and signs- Nearly every waking hour of their lives.

:[Cueball talks on while White Hat begins to walk.]
:Cueball: Do you think their generation will suck at baseball because they learned sloppy skills?
:White Hat: ...So you think someone will become a great writer while ''sexting?''

:[They walk together.]
:Cueball: Have you ''read'' James Joyce's love letters? The phrases "My little fuckbird" and "Arse full of farts" appear. If we want to write ''Ulysses'', our generation may not be sexting ''enough''.
:White Hat: Eww.

==Trivia==
*Randall originally misspelled surprise as "suprise" in the first panel and also wrote "writing writing" in the beginning of the title text in stead of just "writing". It was initially conjectured here that the errors may have been deliberately introduced as they are relevant to the subject. However, both of these errors were corrected on the same day the comic was released and currently are not present in the live version.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Language]]

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1414: Writing Skills