Why Gen Y Writes Better

With the internet and social media, the way people write has rapidly changed -- and for the better. Generation Y communicates more effectively than previous generations in real and important ways. Here are a few lessons.

Get to the point

Email, websites and activity streams on Facebook and Twitter have forced people to get to the point quickly. Ideally in 140 characters or less.

By contrast, a Victorian novelist could spend fifty pages building up a vague outline of a story, knowing that the next 800 pages would develop it in full. Readers didn't have that many other distractions.

On a web page, even a whole paragraph of text will scare readers away. 

In work-related email, authors have a sentence or two at best to capture the attention before the reader categorizes the missive as important or junk.

Generation Y does a better job of getting to the point than previous generations. They've learned from the great ad copywriters like David Ogilvy by osmosis. 

Think small

As in, small paragraphs. 

High schools continue to teach students to write five paragraph long essays based on recursive hierarchical outlines. No one who wants to be read writes like that on the web.

Newspapers have long since learned to limit each paragraph to one idea. One quote, one point. Then move on.

Generation Y has grown up with web copy and news written to be consumed, not to pass tests.

Cite, don't recite

In an interconnected world of information that's Too Big to Know, Gen Y links to the source, rather than paraphrase it at length.

Write for today

Gen Y writes in the genres of our age: microblogs, email, text messages. They do it better than their elders.

Epic poetry was the genre of a much earlier age. Then came letters, novels, essays, memos and other forms. Some of them are now as antiquated as epic poems.

Communication has become more condensed and interconnected. Like all great writers, Gen Y authors express themselves in the leading genres of their age.

Sentence fragments are good

Lists communicate key information in less space than sentences and paragraphs do. 

And in bulleted and numbered lists, bare words and phrases fare better than full sentences.

Gen Y has grown up with websites filled with lists. Like craigslist. They get it.

Punctuation matters

It's easy to mock emoticons. But Generation Y understands that text is an impoverished medium of communication compared to in-person interaction. 

Punctuation introduces time, defining where to breathe and pause. What's a question? It's important!

Emoticons expand the repertoire of punctuation, adding winks, smiles, embraces, frowns and more. In compact form.

Gen Y uses punctuation marks to achieve a wider range of expression with higher information density.

Consider your audience 

Teens write in acronyms and emoticons -- to each other. 

But the best young writers seamlessly shift to more formal communication as needed, without forgetting the key communication skills listed above. 

Be personal

A personal human touch connects you to your audience. 

Having a point of view, and a personality, helps you to grab people's interest, and convince them you're a real human being, not a spam bot.

Generation Y is not filled with men and women in gray flannel suits. It's filled with human beings who know how to act human.

Newspapers led the way, shifting from factual articles that answered the Five W's in the first paragraph, to  articles that captured readers' interest with narrative anecdotes. 

Gen Y combines the two, beginning with a catchy sentence with a personal twist that leaves the newspaper model looking like the start of a Dickens novel in comparison. 

Summary

While grammar scolds may gripe about Gen Y's inability to write a sentence, and verbal SAT scores may indeed be flagging, the complainers fail to fully appreciate how written communication is changing, and in many ways for the better.

Writing remains as relevant as ever. It continues to be an acquired skill. 

Many in Gen Y have learned to write well in ways many of their teachers haven't mastered. They've learned as great writers always have: from practice.  

What do you think? Is there a case to be made that people write better today than ever before?