Simon Kuper takes the contrarian view on how social media has affected written English in this Financial Times post: "George Orwell in 1944 lamented the divide between wordy, stilted written English, and much livelier speech. 'Spoken English is full of slang,' he wrote, 'it is abbreviated wherever possible, and people of all social classes treat its grammar and syntax in a slovenly way.' His ideal was writing that sounded like speech. We’re getting there at last."
