I’m not a big fan of twitter even though some of the tweets that have scrolled across my screen were funny, pithy, or linked to interesting posts and articles.
Some will say “I don’t get Twitter.” Others will say Twitter’s just as addictive as texting and will soon collapse as another transitory fad.
The Twitter and text messaging debate includes warnings that these forms have taken the partial demise of proper English from slapdash e-mails and are further obliterating the language by forcing upon us ungrammatical conventions and more sloppy writing.
Such warnings appear to be as nonsensical as suggesting that those who write classic 17-syllable haiku are destroying our language or that TV commercial pitchmen are reducing words to the ugly and the very ugly. Language changes as our needs change. It’s dynamic and not engraved in stone unless it’s an epitaph.
I think English will survive Twitter. Those who get it, get it. Those who don’t. don’t. For some, Twitter’s a God-send, for others a pointless time-waster. Maybe English will change. If so, I will find it amusing to see how our English and literature teachers and other guardians of the status quo handle the new upheavals in their lives.
I’m not losing any sleep over Twitter.
Meanwhile, Roy Peter Clark’s Poynter Online post called “From Telegraph to Twitter: The Language of the Short Form” might reassure you that brevity is the soul of wit and that Twitter-wise and language-wise, all is not lost.
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Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of the comedic thriller “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”–
Malcolm's Round Table 
I think its name describes it quite well.
It must be for the birds, then.
how interesting. I enjoyed your thoughts here. makes me wonder sometimes when I see some kids’ writings, even my own from time to time, now filled w/ shorthand. I also enjoyed the article you linked to. I found it very interesting and never linked online communication to telegraphy. very interesting and made sense too. I myself can’t speak about twitter, since I”ve never been on there. I do however, like the idea of the brevity of the messages left there (though you’d never be able to tell by the length of this comment!)
I hadn’t thought about telegraphy either, Silken, but it made sense. The language is always changing even thought it often looks like it’s becoming sloppy and lest sophisticated. We wrote notes in shorthand as kids and didn’t think we were destroying the language.
Malcolm