If the essence of culture is to rely increasingly on technology then our concentration should turn to efficiency and not convenience—we’ve heard this and it’s obvious—but to a writer, what does it mean specifically? It means that as the attention span of the public decreases, so should the length of our sentences accordingly and in all good proportion; we must strive to express our thoughts using as few words and as little punctuation as possible.

We are plagued, however, endlessly, it seems, by those stagnant minded traditionalists who can never seem to finish a sentence; indeed it’s as if the period were meant only for the most desperate of occasions, when a point couldn’t possibly be dragged on any further or when the end of the piece of writing in question is no longer avoidable by any of the technical dodges so well worn and diverse; for justification these writers will often refer to Franz Kafka (in the case of those who overuse the semi-colon), Charles Maturin (for those shameless abusers of the dash), Herman Melville (violator on all counts but infamous for the three page run on sentence), other pedantic obsoletes while consistently threatening with a glib sort of exterior gloss to exhaust the breath and patience of anyone foolish enough to pay attention to their work at all, much less read it aloud.