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.