Thread: Are text messages making children stupid?

I thought telephones were developed for the ease of communication.

Why all the "typing"?

I should write Verizon and suggest they develop a new phone with morse code.

[quote name='Inkslinger' date='29 September 2009 - 03:17 AM' timestamp='1254219459' post='29653']

I thought telephones were developed for the ease of communication.

Why all the "typing"?

I should write Verizon and suggest they develop a new phone with morse code.

[/quote]



I heard about a new mini laptop that almost completely automates the task of drawing stick figures on the wall of a cave.

On the other hand, perhaps there is something to be said... The Philadelphia Inquirer recently celebrated its 180th anniversary, and re-printed select pages from historically-significant issues. Here's a sample of text from the first issue, published in 1829... In it, John R. Walker states the goals and principles of what was then called The Pennsylvania Inquirer:

Usage, grown into common law, requires the editors of newspapers, in the commencement of their publication, to give to their readers an exposition on the principles and views by which they mean to be governed in the prosecution of their labors. In ushering into existence the first number of "The Pennsylvania Inquirer," we have no disposition to depart from this ancient custom, rendered venerable no less by the lapse of time, than by the acknowledged intelligence of those who have concurred in perpetuating it.



The elementary principles of our government, however, being so well and so generally understood, it will be superfluous for us to say more in relation to that branch of our exposition, than that, rocked by the cradle and educated in the school of democracy, we ever have been, and ever shall continue, devoted to the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuse as against the usurpation of power. For a series of years, members of the democratic republican party, amidst all its trials and struggles, in adversity as well as prosperity, we have found sufficient reason generally to approve its course, while we have never hesitated to express our disapprobation of such of its measures of policy as we deemed incompatible with the interests of the nation. Firm and unwavering in our adherance to the original and inestimable principles which elevated that party to power in this country, we shall frequently recur to those principles, in order to remind our fellow-citizens of the danger of departing from their strict observance. Our predecessors, at the close of the last century, gained, by their success, very little advantage for the people, if we do not faithfully persevere in maintaining the republican cause in the spirit by which its ascendancy was achieved. Wherever we may be found laboring to palliate the abuses of government; whenever we take part against the people, in their efforts to resist the encroachments of power, there and then shall we be found delinquents to the great cause of human freedom, and we shall hope to be frequently and profitably reminded of our delinquency.

Source



This was in a regular newspaper. Even if you ignore the fact that the sentences are WAY too long by our standards (the second paragraph is five sentences long), the words used are not usually seen in today's newspapers.

[quote name='justonemorevoice' date='29 September 2009 - 04:50 AM' timestamp='1254214237' post='29649']

go to pf forum and check out flounders use of the comma. most annoying.

[/quote]



Is that the haiku-ish guy?



I speak, in riddles



Because unlike the, others



I've nothing, to say