By Jason Heard
Editor, the Gauntlet:
Re: "You’ve got poor grammar," Sept. 7, 2002.
I agree with Вen Li; there is a significant lack of grammar in cyberspace. Li is wrong on one point, however. The origin of bad grammer in cyberspace is not due to bad habits formed when technology was slow, as Li suggests. Even in the "old days," typing "thx 4 joke rotflmaopp jk" instead of "Thanks for the joke, I’m rolling on the floor laughing my ass off, pissing my pants (just kidding)!" was laziness on the part of the typer. The 100 characters in the longer version would take less than a second to transmit at 1,200-baud, and less than four seconds even at an ancient 300 baud (try typing the full sentence in less than four seconds). So, using poor grammar, even in the old days, never had a good excuse.