Evolution of Style: What’s the New Norm?

 

In our last newsletter, we spoke about how the Internet is changing our way of life and the way we run our businesses. But what about the way we write?

 

Think for a moment about how long you look at an article, a story, a book, before you lose interest and toss it aside. Be honest. Is it three minutes? Two? A paragraph? A sentence? Will you make it through this article without distraction?

 

Many people, especially ones outside the writing profession, would find themselves in this category. A lot of these feelings can be attributed to the infinite amount of options at your fingertips: every time we are bored, there are other similar options to turn to.

 

In turn, sentence structure and style are affected as well. No longer are sentences constructed with Whitman-esque length. We’re not talking about artistic style of course, but everyday rhetoric. Sentences become shorter, more concise. Paragraphs become less dense.

 

Perhaps we are all thinking about how our work would come across on a computer screen, where too-long paragraphs tend to be skipped over. Examine any major news website for a visual example: no paragraph is longer than five lines. Each article on Cnn.com has a summary at the top in the form of a bulleted list, so that you don’t even have to spend the time reading the article.

 

While this may seem shocking or appalling to industry professionals, don’t forget that there are some upsides.

 

The modern reader is now more able to latch onto intricate plotlines with faster-paced scenes and narratives. Think about the plot of the television show “Lost” or Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5. Full of twisting plot lines and dead ends, they still make sense to today’s reader/viewer. Is this because our familiarity with the Internet allows us to keep track of more connections than ever before?

 

If you think this changing writing style is the bane of literary existence, check out Brevity, a creative journal of concise literature. According to its guidelines, each submission must be under 750 words. Contributing authors can be complete unknowns to award-winning authors like two Pulitzer prize finalists, numerous NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, and Best American authors. This interpretation of changing style forces the authors to think about expression and technique.

 

Creative pursuits aside, this affects writers in a variety of ways. The time in which authors have to draw a reader (or prospective publisher) in has been dramatically reduced. Also, being concise forces writers to think about what is really important in what we are saying. What can your writing afford to lose, and what can it not? The results may make your message even stronger than it was before.

 

Trish Wooldridge, a freelance writer, editor and educator says, “Yes, we definitely are expected to get to the point faster and with much less embellishment.  Story lengths are significantly shorter and sentences are expected to pull at least twice the weight as about 20 years earlier – even in print publications. On the teaching/learning side, students still struggle with the idea of conciseness in their writing, despite potentially reading more on the Internet, where conciseness is so prevalent.”

 

Farrah Parker, a public relations consultant with FD Parker & Associates, says that this kind of evolution of style was inevitable: “… Concise messages play a major role in effective 21st century communication and are a natural evolution of language. Just as we diluted our predecessors' highly formal version of the English language, our casual approach to language will also experience an alteration that some may consider a digression.”

 

So what does this mean to you, the writer? Does it force you to change your own creative style, or anything else about your writing? It absolutely does not. Does it make you think about how your writing could be better perceived online? Does it suggest how much less time you have to impress a reader or a publisher? You bet. Is it kind of fun to think that you may have a part in shaping the next generation of language and style? Well, you be the judge.