Has writing English that all English speakers can effortlessy comprehend become a thing of the past, I wonder?
What caused this line of thought was reading some text on a web site I was updating for a client. I telephoned the client's PR to query one particular sentence from which I was certain there were words missing. "Oh no," the PR told me, "that is the author writing in what we might call "YoungPersonSpeak", the language that connects with his 'target demographic' and tells them that he is definitely a hip young dude." But, I countered, it tells anyone who went to a decent school, where grammar is still taught, that he is a hip, young, illiterate dude. What is more, it tells anyone of our age that he is a completely ignorant twit and should never be let loose within reach of any corporate communications: especially those corporate communications that potential clients anywhere in the world can easily access.
This is not the first time I have railed against others' mis-use of our fine language, and I am sure it will not be the last. I will admit that I can be something of a pedant. However, while I accept that change in a language is inevitable and, often, desirable, there have to be limits. I consider that those limits are passed when the language becomes unpleasant to read or hear, or fails to convey any meaning. Consider, for example, the addition of '-wise' to form completely unnecessary words such as 'performance-wise': what is wrong with the slightly more wordy 'in terms of performance'? Nothing! I simply cannot imagine the sort of person who fails to appreciate the sheer ugliness of expressions such as 'accessibility-wise'.
My point in this instance is that writing in any currently fashionable style will make your text look so dated and un-hip once the particular fashion has passed, as all fashions inevitably do. So, unless you are hell-bent on leveraging the potential of loon-pant language, it might be best to stick with plain, simple, proper English, like what they learnt us at school, dude.