The Dying Art Of Proper Sentence Structure

Author and professor of English at the University of Delaware, Ben Yagoda, laments the inability of the younger generation to consistently write grammatically correct sentences. In his article in the Chronicle Review, he says that new kind of errors are creeping in the students’, as well as most of the Internet generation’s, writing. Ben refers to them as ‘clunk’, something which makes sentences longer and very dull. He mentions that the main reason for this dying art of making proper sentences is the lack of interest in reading, which makes people commit errors in punctuation and use of words.

Ben sums up his argument by saying:

Here’s what’s happening, as I see it. My students aren’t unique but represent a portion of the millennial generation: at least moderately intelligent, reasonably well-educated young people. When they write in a formal setting—for a class assignment or for publication in a blog or a magazine—they almost always favor length over brevity, ornateness over simplicity, literalness over figuration. The reasons, I hypothesize, are a combination: the wandering-the-house-in-the-dark factor, hypercorrection brought on by chronic uncertainty, and the truth that once people start talking or writing, they like to do so as long as they can, even if the extra airtime comes from saying “myself” instead of “I.”

Ben Yagoda

The Chronicle: “The Elements of Clunk”