Internet Grammar 101

The popularity of the internet has, without a doubt, altered grammar as we know it.  What is deemed acceptable and unacceptable depends greatly on the medium I'm writing in.  For example, even though I'm making a conscious effort to include proper punctuation and capitalization, this is my own blog.  no one could reasonably judge me if i started typing my posts like this.  because it's the internet.

Personally what I deem as having more relevancy that the actual proper rule-following is the consistency- if you're not going to capitalize I on the internet, that's fine, just don't only do it every other time.  Honestly that fluctuation would seem much more unreliable to myself as a reader than "bad" grammar in general.

Now of course there is a large difference between dropping the capitalization of some proper nouns and leaving out a few commas and entirely forgetting how to speak the English langauge.

Tumblr is the reigning master of such babble, which at first seems idiotic but becomes oddly familiar and almost endearing.  Many bloggers there are so full of feelings (or feels, as they prefer to call them) that they're reduced to simply shouting things like "I CAN'T", implying that they can't handle all the emotion they're feeling.  Even better than that is when they elaborate, such as "omg i can't even, i've lost the ability to can."

Beyond this they have a habit of randomly stARTING TO GET EXCITED IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE.  I'm honestly not sure who began that practice, but it is sort of oddly helpful to be able to read how they would be speaking the words they typed (for me, at least, since I'm very obsessive about things being read as they would be said- see previous post about my punctuation abuse and writing voice).

But even these weird little internet quirks don't bother me.  I can handle a little bit of funky grammar, and even a few wonky sentence structures.  Where I draw the line is at made up words, which make you seems like an uneducated person trying to sound smart.  If you say supposably instead of supposedly or expecially instead of especially, you've lost all credibility in my eyes and I will probably not continue to read a word you have written, unless it's to make fun of you.  Harsh but true.