Just Thinking

I don't own a smart phone; perhaps I am not smart enough to own one. I got a text message on my tiny foldup cell phone the other day from someone, I am sure by mistake, which I had a hard time reading. The text was in some kind of shorthand, I thought, with abbreviated or truncated words and acronyms. But with a little effort I did manage to unravel the text and figure out what the message was.

Obviously, this newly evolving type of writing is facilitating text type communications, especially among the younger people who use their more nimble fingers dancing around those little keyboards on hand-held smart phones. The messages, often lacking proper grammatical structure, get through and are becoming ever more intuitively decipherable. I can easily imagine books and other publications gradually adopting this form of writing, much to my wife's chagrin; she is an excellent proofreader!

What is the primary role of language, anyway if not as the most effective means of communication between people? Language in its many forms is the verbal, gestural, symbolical and written vehicle for conveying some message or communicating among humans. The word "vehicle" is the key word here. Vehicles such as mules, cars, trains, ships and planes that carry people and goods across the planet are, very similarly, also tools that serve their intended purpose.

The point is, both language as a means of communication, and vehicles as our means of transportation, are living things, growing, changing and improving continuously to accommodate evolving social demands. In different words, you cannot stop the gradual obsolescence in things that need to evolve and adapt to stay alive. Therefore, it would be logical that whatever change, whether in language or in the means of transportation, that might improve the efficiency of the delivery, be it a message or some cargo, should be expected and accepted.

Admittedly, there is a difference between the merits of increasing speed and efficiency in delivering cargo from place to place, versus linguistic communications. As human civilizations progress and gain increasing complexity, the inefficient modes of transportation are gradually abandoned; the Wells Fargo or the Pony Express of the old are replaced by the likes of FedEx or UPS; and the written communications by the more efficient, often paperless, electronic means. The iconic Wells Fargo wagons are frozen in time in museums as symbols of the obsolete past; but the written texts, no matter how old, remain accessible in the archives and libraries as the living continuum of human knowledge and literary achievements. We can read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or a translation of Plato's Republic, or even that of the 5,000+ years-old Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh today, as though they were written yesterday.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the use of language in its written and spoken forms has been going through gradual changes that every living organ goes through in the process of natural adaptive evolution. Without evolving to adapt to ever-changing environment the organ will not survive the test of time. There are far too many examples of such changes that we have witnessed and are witnessing to recount here.

We must understand that written texts are no more than the best approximations of the spoken words, and not the other way around. We say an apple, and not a apple; a home, and not an home, for a good reason; it is simply easier and flows better that way in speech. Grammatical rules, particularly the punctuation marks in written texts, are designed to represent the nuances and inflexions of the spoken language in such a way that the reader could become a virtual listener to a speaker. There are periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas, semicolons, etc. that serve that purpose effectively.

In time, these grammatical conventions become established as regulations or rules similar to traffic laws, which must be obeyed by all. When a driver approaches a stop sign at an empty intersection in the middle of the night, he is obligated by law to come to a full stop before proceeding on. I got my very first traffic citation back in 1956 when I coasted through such an empty intersection somewhere in Santa Monica, California at 2:00 a.m. I had failed to see a Black & White parked on the other side near a small gas station. "It's the law." said the officer as he ignored my objections that the "law" was designed for safety reasons, and that I was clearly not endangering anyone by coasting slowly through that empty intersection. I had just run out of gas and didn't want to push the car across the street to get to that gas station.

This brings me to the purpose of this short essay. In the case of strict application of traffic regulations, we cannot leave the adherence to the rules to any individual's personal discretion; that's obvious; and I was wrong in pleading my case with that police officer. But disobeying certain established linguistic rules, which are actually conventions and not laws, would not jeopardize people's lives or civil rights. However, there is a strong headwind against violating strict linguistic conventions by the custodians of language arts.

I personally prefer not to use any punctuation marks in my writings as long as readers grasp my points which may or may not be statements of facts. Sure, I could rewrite the same sentence as: I, personally, prefer not to use any punctuation marks in my writings, as long as the readers grasp my points, which may or may not be statements of facts. But why? In my opinion punctuation marks should be used sparingly and only to avoid potential confusion or in cases where a short or long pause or a nuanced inflection might add to the reader's better understanding of the writer's intents.

I guess most professional proofreaders and language teachers would disagree with me. But I do opt for using my regular dinner fork to eat my salad at the dinner table instead of a separate salad fork often set side by side in a formal place setting! If that breaking of the established decorum upsets the bourgeois hostess, so be it.

Kam Zarrabi