Hypercompendia

Writinghood has a post this morning bemoaning the loss of good writing skills by way of technological access. While I might agree that a lot of people dont' spell well, use proper capitalization and sentence structure, or bother proofreading, I would suggest that if technology is the problem, the burden of the degeneration of proper writing form is based not on weblogs, but on text messaging, email, and the generation which grew up in this new world of visual communication. And too, I would most assertively take into account that the personality of the user/writer is the most overwhelming influence of all.

"Blogs and Instant Messengers: the Bane of Good Writing Habits" is deceptively simplifying a trend towards less stress on grammar, punctuation and spelling. The majority of people aren't real writers, aren't terrific at good writing, and hate it. It's true that text messaging and limited character space such as what twitter allows encourages stuff such as "w meet u at 3, be :)" but blogs have no such restrictions on space and the majority of folk who keep them up (as opposed to those who drop them after a a few months, or write sporadically with months in between) develop a sense of pride and flow of words that encourages good writing habits. It is my belief that the more one reads and the more one writes, the better one gets at improving one's skills. 

It all comes down to this: if you're going to be a writer, every word you write will be improved by the practice. Twitter and such services, much like poetry, encourage brevity. That's what a serious writer will be aware of in using it. Weblogs will be seen as a showcase of communication.  The serious writer will rise above the medium even while it serves as a great means of social communication for the everyday user.