Punctuation, Modern writing, modern media
English Language and Literature
TEXTBOOKS for budding journalists are recommending short sentences of fifteen to twenty words and vertical lists for 'a clear layout' of difficult materials. They instruct that to be successful, authors need not embellish every sentence with a verb, nor, in fact, worry very much about 'grammar'. Language should be pitched to suit the sophistication levels of the reading masses, of whom there are an estimated seventy-seven million incompetents lurking in the U.K. and the U.S. alone. Such are the guiding directives for practising writers, and by extension, for editors, publishers, and book sellers, all of whom are scrambling to accommodate the public. While they race to make text easier, readers become less inclined (and less able) to deal with language that is demanding. Today, even careful writers must "face the fact that fine distinctions between such marks as colons and semicolons will be lost on many of their readers.
Robinson, Gwen G. "The Punctator's World: A Discursion, Part X," The Courier 1997: 123-152.