For What Reason Is Johnny Unable To Craft An Elegant Sentence?

“Here’s what’s happening, as I see it. My students aren’t unique but represent a portion of the millennial generation: at least moderately intelligent, reasonably well-educated young people. When they write in a formal setting — for a class assignment or for publication in a blog or a magazine — they almost always favor length over brevity, ornateness over simplicity, literalness over figuration. The reasons, I hypothesize, are a combination: the wandering-the-house-in-the-dark factor, hypercorrection brought on by chronic uncertainty, and the truth that once people start talking or writing, they like to do so as long as they can, even if the extra airtime comes from saying ‘myself’ instead of ‘I.’”
 — Ben Yagoda argues that this new generation is turning out some terrible prose. He also suggests that punctuation is dying, which, so long it takes the stupid hyphen with it, is fine with me. [Via]

Photo by sidewalk_flying, from Flickr.