Breaking Ranks

Against Twitter's Pour Spelling, #dumbhashtags

Alex Eichler 162 Views Oct 18, 2010

John Allen Paulos, a math professor at Temple University and columnist for ABC News, has apparently learned that not everyone on Twitter is an avid student of Strunk and White. On Monday, Paulos launched the following 120-character missive:

PoinTless caps Are annoying. "So are unneeded quotation marks." Sentence fragments, bad speling, and cute #hashtags too.less than a minute ago via webJohn Allen Paulos
JohnAllenPaulos


Twitter, of course, is a place where the English language is subject to all manner of indignities, including radical abbreviation, full-sentence hashtagging, and good old terrible spelling. Paulos's Twitter account features a number of witty musings on the medium, but still, it's curious that he would attempt to storm the castle from within like this.

Even odder, perhaps, is that he left a full 20 characters unused. Herewith, the Wire suggests some other windmills Paulos might have tilted at:

h8 u textspeak

F*ck starred curses!

http://bit.ly/bLsdqS

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