Without any intention to single out one individual, I'd like to address a 
worsening issue regarding electronic communication.  This is not a diatribe 
about "artistic license", the difficulties of English as a second language, 
regional differences in slang or syntax or the subtleties of hanging 
participles.  What I would like to see is less casual and more appropriate 
use of the fundamentals of English by those who should know better.

Professional communications should reflect not only the expertise of the 
individual, but their intellectual acuity as well.  We are not Twittering 
each other, so we should be writing in complete sentences with proper 
capitalization and punctuation.  While I may be a Luddite in this regard, 
doesn't it take more effort to purposely write without these attributes than 
with them, as all our years of formal training would dictate?

We have enough trouble with the bastardization of the current lexicon.  For 
instance, when was the last time you "migrated" a chair from one room to 
another, or you asked yourself what "impacted" your decision to buy a 
particular car?  In my opinion we should eschew the tendency to accept 
trendy but lazy language and work to maintain some semblance discipline, if 
only to slow the progression toward the use of "like" three to five times in 
every sentence.  (Is that just in America, or has this disheartening trend 
spread to other English speaking countries?)

I would propose that a given writing or language style should be appropriate 
for the forum in which it is used.  In the case of this forum, where 
intelligent and highly educated scientists predominate, we should stick to 
that level of discourse.

Rantingly yours,
Carl

Carl A. Boswell, Ph.D.
Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Arizona
520-954-7053
FAX 520-621-3709