In a fast-paced society where statements are expressed in 140 characters or less, critics say the confined space is hindering language.
However, a new study is proving the exact opposite.
The top 100 most commonly used words on Twitter were looked at in the study. Out of the 100 most used words, only two were shortened "netspeak" - RT, which is shortened for "retweet," and "u," which is short for "you." The rest of the words averaged about 4.5 letters, and none were contractions.
The study was published in Christian Rudder's new book released Tuesday called "Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)."
An excerpt from the book about Twitter's influence on language reads:
"Twitter actually may be improving its users' writing, as it forces them to wring meaning from fewer letters -- it embodies William Strunk's famous dictum, Omit needless words, at the keystroke level. A person tweeting has no option but concision, and in a backward way the character limit actually ex-plains the slightly longer word length we see. Given finite room to work, longer words mean fewer spaces between them, which means less waste. Although the thoughts expressed on Twitter may be foreshortened, there's no evidence here that they're diminished."
When the next generation is better than us at short, concise writing, we'll be forced to thank the internet.
