Alphabet to EMail: How Written English Evolved and Where It's Heading by Naomi S. Baron

From the Publisher

In Alphabet to Email Naomi Baron takes us on a fascinating and often entertaining journey through the history of the English language, showing how technology - especially email - is gradually stripping language of its formality.
Drawing together strands of thinking about writing, speech, pedagogy, technology, and globalization, Naomi Baron explores the ever-changing relationship between speech and writing and considers the implications of current language trends on the future of written English.
Alphabet to Email will appeal to anyone who is curious about how the English language has changed over the centuries and where it might be going.

David Crystal

Alphabet to Email is one of those rare publishing hybrids: scholarly yet accessible, historically full yet currently relevant, theoretically aware yet practically illustrated. It refreshed the parts that other books on the history of writing have not so far been able to reach.

Choice

Written in a lively, anecdotal style, it should be useful in undergraduate collections and enjoyed by its intended audience of linguists, teachers of composition and TESOL, computer specialists, and the educated lay person.

Boston Sunday Globe

Offers a broad, and broadly informal, overview of the evolution of literacy.

What People Are Saying

Roger Shuy
Email touches all our lives. Try to name another book with such wide appeal. Alphabet to Email is a delightful and enlightening read.
—(Roger Shuy, Georgetown University)

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents