in front on my screen typing away surrounded by pretty graphics and an intelligence that wants to know why I am spelling everything the Un-American Way, I realise the computer age is well and truly off the ground and that one day we will be talking to them and they will be talking back. This is having a significant effect upon language some seen and some not so obvious. The most important is that this is making through the prevalence of America, English the language of choice for businesses which in its turn means everything will be spelled the American way and the drive to shorten English will carry on apace with not only spelling being simplified but there being a very American turn of phrase (I always enjoyed a chief psychiatrist being called a head shrinker.)
Not so obvious is the way typing into a word processor effects how writers write. I notice myself that I have a different turn of phrase than when I am using a pen, partly because this is faster because I don’t have to stop and let my fingers catch up with my thoughts, as I do with a pen and partly because going back and editing is easier with the flow of hand over paper than it is with cursor over text.
whether it is any better is not for me to say…