"Strictly Speaking" Redux

Remember Edwin Newman's great books from the 1970s on writing - "Strictly Speaking," and "A Civil Tongue?" They greatly influenced the improvement of writing since then. However, I just came across this timely article by Naomi S. Baron, titled "Mobile world: Written word may be more informal." Naomi Baron is a professor of linguistics at American University in Washington, DC, and the author of "Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World." She updates Newman's observations and examines the frequent criticism that mobile and Internet writing is polluting written communication. We may hear that abbreviations and other text shortcuts are creeping into other more formal writing, such as academic papers. But she gives us an open-winded analysis of this situations. I hope you enjoy it.