Because Internet
Gretchen McCulloch · How the internet changes language, from texting punctuation to memes and slang.
2 people say it helped them, in their own words on Hacker News.
What people said
It actually has changed how I write on slack. I'm now for example more deliberate about omitting or including periods, break up what before would have been a long, email-like message into smaller messages.
helped me get over a ton of personal grammatical hang-ups I have
Description from Open Library
Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
Read the full description
Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies.
Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.
Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another.
She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.
What people got from it AI summary
Best if you want to write more deliberately online and ease grammar worries.
- Sharper chat writing
- Intentional punctuation
- Eased grammar worries
Style
Practical tools · 336 pages
The one-line description under the title is written by AI. Quotes are copied word for word.