Even before social media, there appears to be a link between increased literacy and decreased sentences. It could be that, as more became literate, the use of the written language shifted to being simpler as it found more uses.
Yeah. Though not really a fan of the use of ‘simpler’ here, as it has other connotations than simply ‘less syntactically complex’ which is really what we’re seeing. In many very real ways, the fragmented phrasing etc of less formalised forms of language are structurally more complex than regular written forms.
I’m not trying to denigrate alternative uses of written language, but I’m highlighting that written language as a whole would have more uses as more people learned it.
Even before social media, there appears to be a link between increased literacy and decreased sentences. It could be that, as more became literate, the use of the written language shifted to being simpler as it found more uses.
Yeah. Though not really a fan of the use of ‘simpler’ here, as it has other connotations than simply ‘less syntactically complex’ which is really what we’re seeing. In many very real ways, the fragmented phrasing etc of less formalised forms of language are structurally more complex than regular written forms.
I’m not trying to denigrate alternative uses of written language, but I’m highlighting that written language as a whole would have more uses as more people learned it.