...and here's the results, as they come.
Courtesy of Circ:
After being asked to write this article and witlessly agreeing, the first thought that came to my mind was, "how am I going to relate with people newly entering the Internet writing scene?"
Here may be something familiar.
You are moments away from signing up for your first online, interactive communication experience. The only thing between you and success is a registration form, with a minimum of twenty-three fields, checkboxes, or other input contraptions specifically designed to bar your entry to the esoteric society of your choosing. Some options appear innocent enough, but others are more sinister.
Username?
Surely some careless souls enter gibberish into that field without a moment's hesitation, but the majority of us agonize over that ever-important moniker, knowing it immediately is used by others to pigeonhole us and will be a large factor in determining our level of acceptance. After a while of laborious brain racking, we produce a name, only to discover it is already taken. So we fall back on our secondary choice, but it is taken as well. In annoyance, we break down and tack a few numbers onto the end, press the submit button, and wait.
Email confirmation? Maybe you are one of the lucky few, and able to sign right in without that hassle. Regardless, now you are in. Interaction is happening all around you at lightning speed. For a while you observe in silence, but inevitably you sense the time must be right to open your yap, and so you dive in with a brilliant "hi guyz!"
Congratulations.
That is probably the first step a lot of us take when we join an online community of one form or another. It is pretty standard stuff. But now you are online, in a chat, on a message board, or something fairly similar. This does not mean you have committed to a sexual alternative or are condemned to translucent skin and glasses. However, depending on the community you fell in with, it will have a dramatic impact on your writing skills.
With any luck, the community you joined believes in the pseudo-representation of their intellect by displaying proper grammatical syntax, spelling, and prose. In order to gain acceptance, you will have to exhibit the same qualities they do to the best of your ability. Call it conformity, peer pressure, Stockholm syndrome—whatever; it will shape your writing in ways will not even realize until years later. Not only that, but you will probably find yourself enjoying it, especially when you write the cover letter that gets you your dream job without a parent hanging over your shoulder, while the other morons who apply fail miserably.
There is one last thing worth noting. Internet predators are drawn to people with poor writing skills.
