Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 13:01:23 -0400
From: Bill Spruiell 3lfyuji[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU
Subject: Re: a taste of mla
It occurs to me that demographic changes among email-users might account for
some of the changes in "custom", in addition to any "evolution" of the
field. In the mid eighties, email users were primarily academics (from the
physical sciences) and engineers/programmers, etc.; not groups you would
expect to be grammatically or formally punctilious. Once email started to
become part of the standard operating procedure of large businesses, one
could expect some of the same concerns that those businesses had about their
written communications to be applied to their electronic ones. Since most
large corporations want to focus on anything but actual content [I don't
know of an emoticon to mark a gratuitious dig, but insert one here] form
becomes a driving issue.