having finished the power of babel, a book on language evolution, i found the following comment on how the internet promotes “bad” spelling insightful:

Ironically, the internet seems to be taking us back a few centuries, to the days before English spellings were standardized by the likes of Webster and other lexicographers. Which was fine back when all parsing of text was done by humans, who could easily figure out that “Thomas Smith” and “Tomas Smythe” were the same person. But as this article points out, it can be a problem when more literal computers are concerned.

it would be highly ironic if electronic media eventually led to the emergence of many new dialects after having contributed substantially to the demise of most of the world’s languages. these new dialects would not necessarily form along geographical lines, but would connect social subgroups independent of location.
one particularly amusing slip i am seeing more and more is “bare with me”.

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