As a Full Internet Person and a language nerd (who probably would have studied linguistics had it been an option at her university), this book is RIGHT up my linguistic internet alley!

I have been following Gretchen’s blog All Things Linguistic for years, and to see all her hard work culminate in this book is amazing!

Have you ever had to explain to your parents why their texts come across as passive aggressive? Have you tried and failed to explain a meme to a Semi Internet Person?? Have you ever wondered why kids these days are geniuses when it comes to social media but can’t format an email to save their lives??? Then this book is for you!

The best part of this book, as a concept, is that Gretchen takes internet language seriously. As someone who grew up with the internet, but is still old enough to remember a time before everyone had computers in their houses, the majority of my life has been spent on the internet. I grew up with AIM and chat rooms, migrated to Facebook and Twitter, and still spend a great deal of time (arguably too much) on social media. I have “internet friendships” with people I’ve never met irl, and I am “friends” with people I met once in person and have never spoken to since. The common denominator here is communication, so to dismiss that entirely is to dismiss a huge part of how so many people talk to each other. To say that this has no effect on “irl English” is not only false, but honestly laughable.

Gretchen not only takes internet language seriously, but delves into how and why English has evolved and its effects on how we communicate, online and offline. Even today when the internet is ubiquitous and practically inescapable, many people tend to dismiss what goes on “there” (as if the internet is some far off land they’ll never visit) as something that doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. Reading this book gave me a sense of validation that not only is my life online worth something, but that it’s having a huge influence on the English language in general (not my life specifically, obviously, but the collective lives of those of us who spend a lot of time in our digital worlds).

And I think it will also help those doubters (my parents among them, being Semi Internet People) see the ways that language is changing and that maybe it’s not all bad. Also, it might help them see why an occasional emoji in a text message isn’t the worst idea