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Joshua Malbin1Straight: An Orthographical FableThe Straight Line concept arose from an interminable discussion on posting andcommenting etiquette on one of the big political blogs. On several occasions recently acongressman had ventured to have his staff write posts in his name, the comments hadgotten heated, and the politician had been attacked with ads that quoted the mostincendiary of these.None of the blog’s members thought they should have to censor themselves.Yanking quotes out of context and presenting them as exemplars of the whole movementwas simply one of the tricks the other side was known to use. What galled some of themwas that many of the worst quotes had been meant facetiously, and the ads pretendedotherwise.User BlueEagle42 suggested adding a recommendation to the site’s commentingguidelines that all users clearly designate their sarcasm with something like the <snark>tag. This idea was roundly disdained by many other users, who said that insisting all jokes carry signs was the height of humorlessness.

Fine

, wrote commenter WunBunHun,

what if we flip the idea onits head? What if we create a tag writers can use when theydo want to be read in good faith?

The symbol chosen was the vertical line (|), a keyboard symbol otherwise little usedin normal writing. Not all users adopted it. It was optional, and many felt that if they

Joshua Malbin2used it sometimes, leaving it out would telegraph their jokes just as badly as the originalidea.But most took to it fast. Within a few months two-thirds of the site’s writers wereinserting it into their straight posts and comments. Many of these writers cross-postedtheir work to other sites or their personal blogs, so it was already beginning to spread allover the blogosphere, from political sites to ones devoted to sports, TV, cooking, andtravel. It proved especially popular on Twitter and Facebook, where forced concisionhad always made gauging irony a challenge for literally-inclined readers. Since manymajor news organizations now hired bloggers—or writers who’d begun as bloggers—iteven appeared on more mainstream sites.Over the next couple of years, the Straight Line gradually conquered the rest of theinternet—which effectively meant it conquered writing as a whole, since that’s wheremost of the world’s writing now lived. It could be found in everything from emails totelevision transcripts. Some objected to the Straight Line on aesthetic or grammaticalgrounds, likening it to such abominations as the use of quotation marks for emphasis.Others resisted it because they didn’t want to be held to a standard of absoluteseriousness, and recognized that if they used it at all they could never drop it. But noneof these objections stopped the Straight Line, anymore than they’d eliminated grocer’squotation marks.No, it was teenagers who ultimately killed it. Here was this thing adults had createdto convey total sincerity—an irresistible target. How could a kid resist texting |So hottt!|

Category:	Creative Writing > Short Stories
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Upload Date:	10/19/2009
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