Is the Internet Bad for Writing? Two Articles Debate the Effects of the Web on Grammar

The Internet may have certain affects on the process of writing, but it is after all just another medium for people to express themselves through. Everything on the Internet is just an extension of our thoughts and opinions. In an article by Phillip Elmer - Dewitt, Bards of the Internet (Time, 1994), Dewitt promotes a new generation of writers in contrast to David Rothenberg's piece on How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students Research Papers. Both authors use the Internet as the cause of either good or bad writing, but what they both overlook is that it is the individual and not the medium that does the writing.

Most of the writing done on the Internet is done with personal e-mails, blogs, chat rooms and forums. Where you might find the emerging "generation of young writers," as Dewitt refers to them, is in the message boards and discussion groups held through e-mail and Online. Most writing online is much more an extension of our speech than the refined writing styles of print. There are also thousands of websites, such as AssociatedContent.com, that publish the written word offering anyone in this new generation of writers to exhibit their thoughts. The problem lies within that anyone can publish online and Dewitt has seen the "sloppy, meandering, puerile, ungrammatical," writing, just as Rothenberg has seen his "slacker" students "let the machine do their work for them." So both agree that, as much as the Internet hosts a generation of young writers it is also a breeding ground for bad writing.

It is becoming difficult to take the Internet seriously as our e-mail is inundated with Spam and pornography, just as pop-up advertising often interrupts web browsing. Most of the material on the Web is "foolish and trivial" as Dewitt's quote from Nielson Hayden of Tor Books mentions. The Internet may be the dawn of the age of information, but it is as Rothenberg considers it, "advertising for information." Anyone can ramble on about anything, or worse sell something disguised as information and as Rothenberg fears of his students, this information can be taken seriously.