Across the World Wide Web, it’s invariably apparent that a user’s vernacular has evolved–devolved, rather–insofar as introducing new words to describe and replace certain terms.
The oversimplification of language permeates online communication.
Dating back to prior to the turn of the 21st century–well before current web and social media interfaces became ubiquitous–The New York Times reported how the Internet prompted people to be ungrammatical like anytime previously.
“What the Internet has done is create a space for language that runs and slips over the boundary of public and private language,” James J. O’Donnell, Author of Avatar of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace, told the Times.
In this environment, the proclivity for informality can be projected to mean that society wants less defined socioeconomic structure, not as much control from institutions, and more of an open place for democratic concepts. The Internet continually spurs change. It’s a massive setting that welcomes informal dialogue, with plenty of trial and error going on, expediting the conventional pace of language adoption.
In fact, the latest edition of Merriam Webster’s Unabridged online dictionary will include words such as “WTF”, “photobomb”, and “emoji”, with the possibility of others joining these terms a year from now. The latter one, emoji, didn’t have its own definition as early as six years ago, serving now as a mainstream alternative for the Japanese-based emoticon.
Naomi S. Baron, Author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, believes that this newfound terminology is a part of a natural pattern, where specific words tend to crop up into the public at large’s purview, just to vanish from relevancy or existence shortly thereafter.
Some in academia once even fretted that the wide use of AOL Instant Messenger presented a language disconnect too steep to overcome. Yet, that’s far from being the case. The proliferation of social outlets like Twitter, Snapchat, and others pushes forward a time in which identifiable words, the right editing, and grammar are less vital than just conveying meaning as quickly as possible–primarily as seen fit by the masses.
The forthcoming years, Baron states, people can expect a rather laissez-faire attitude towards writing and speech.
Conversely, such language trends surface into the sports realm, when it can be easily overlooked.
Grammarly, a San Francisco-based company focused on improving writing skills via its own platform, took it upon themselves to conduct a study that assesses the writing proficiency–or lack thereof–for each of Major League Baseball’s 30 clubs’ fan bases, with regards to their respective grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills. This exercise aligns with Grammarly’s mission to promote and assist people’s communication.
From May 1 to May 15 this year, they used their automated proofreading software to analyze 150 comments of at least 50 words from each team’s official website, checking them for grammatical and spelling errors. Michael Mager, Grammarly’s Online Marketing Analyst, tells SportTechie that they elected to sample longer comments because they were more likely to be full sentences instead of single words or fragments. They also wanted the most up-to-date data possible, so they limited themselves to recent posts only.
Through Grammarly’s platform, they proofread fans’ comments insofar as checking for over 250 types of contextual, grammatical, and spelling mistakes in a matter of seconds. Once the software concluded these tasks, Grammarly went ahead and validated the errors with their own in-house proofreading standards. And as they continue to improve the software, human review of the errors remains a way in which to enhance this process.
“Grammarly offers instant feedback,” says Mager.
“There were over 300,000 words sampled; and even with a team of eagle-eye editors, proofreading that much text takes a lot of time. Grammarly was able to quickly point these errors out and evaluate the fans’ language skills. The software also doesn’t get tired or suffer from eyestrain, so that’s another big plus,” Mager continued, highlighting the benefits of automation versus other forms of editing.
Having previously completed a similar project focused on the NFL, that study dealt the team sections within NFL.com, whereas this one was based on the individual official MLB team websites. With regards to the former case, some NFL teams sites have disabled their comments section; and Grammarly wanted to ensure their results were as consistently collected and analyzed as possible, as took place for this MLB study.
Mager mentions that they found that competitiveness of a team on the field doesn’t predict the quality of communication used among their fans. The Cleveland Indians’ fans have the best grammar, with only 3.6 errors per 100 words, yet the team hasn’t a championship in years. New York Yankees’ fans, meanwhile, scored 12.1 mistakes per 100 words, making them fifth worst, but the Yankees have won the most titles.
If this study was derived from social media networks instead of a team’s website, the results would be reflected differently, however.
Twitter would be more difficult to analyze because it has a 140-character limit. Facebook, though, would actually be more prime setting to evaluate fan grammar, considering that people tend to write longer comments with complete sentences on this medium.
Mager explains the key takeaway (the results are shown in the infographic below): “ The purpose of this study, aside from from having fun and getting Mets fans riled up, was to show the impact of grammar on the way we communicate. The better your grammar, the more easily and clearly you can express your ideas–even if those ideas mostly about how much your rival stinks.”
Grammar, though, can get deprioritized when speed or space is an issue, while everyone isn’t inherently a strong writer.
Baron notes that much of what used to be solely for print journalism appears now on everyone’s smartphones. Thus, there’s a feeling that these terms and forms of expression are fleeting. Nobody intends to just record something, but to quickly act, with the final product being so ephemeral.
“Like MLB players, you need to practice and learn good techniques to get better at your game,” says Mager.
