The phrase "communications revolution" has earned itself cliché status in the last year or so, rocketed into prominence by the frenzied growth of the World Wide Web. And most of us use the term in a cliched fashion, tossing it around with little thought to its meaning. But, the truth is, this is no cliché. What we are witnessing is a true revolution, on the scale of the industrial revolution or the birth of printing.

The communications revolution is not about computer technology. It's about people and the way we live our lives. And it's going to affect many more aspects of our lives than most people are prepared for – or prepared to accept.

Take, for instance, spelling. Let's face it: speling has had its day. I know what sum of you are thinking. The deth of spelling? That will shorely be the end of civilization as we no it.

Rubbish! Spelling has it uses, of course. As a writer, I'm the first to acknowledge that.

But the trouble is, we've become rigid about spelling. And the book, the printed word, is to blame for this rigidity. The ability to spell 'correctly' is today used to measure our level of literacy – even our social standing – and any perceived decrease in the spelling ability of people in general is regarded as a sign of social decay.

And yet, before the printing press, people could spell perfectly well: they simply spelt each word the way it sounded. This made for a spelling that reflected local nuances and changes in pronunciation over time. According to Dale Spender (in her book, Nattering on the Net) Shakespeare himself spelt his name 16 different ways. And yet, you'd hardly deem him illiterate, now would you?

Centuries of print have chained us to inflexible spelling and, similarly, a fixed grammar. This has happened so gradually we fail to see it was merely a process set in train by a new type of communications technology, the printing press.

And now, here we are with yet another new communications technology: computers and online communications. This new technology is, at the very least, going to have as dramatic an impact as the printing press. Combine spelling checkers that are getting smarter; online conversation where the written word is the coin of conversation but so fluid it's almost molten; the coming of voice recognition; and the lessening of the pre-eminent position of the book in the world of writing (just look at the amount of written material that the Web represents – and none of it is in book form). Combine all these things, and our rigid adherence to spelling and grammar standards starts to look shaky. Certainly, it makes no sense to judge someone's social standing or value on such a thing as the ability to learn some rote rules.

If you spend any time chatting online, you'll quickly see that the crucial thing is communication, not standards. When someone writes onscreen "It's great getting to no you Rose" I know exactly what they mean. And why should I bother about that "no" instead of "know"? There are myriad reasons why it doesn't matter: the writer could be 9 years old, they could be aged and arthritic, they could be disabled, they could be in a hurry, they could be focussing on the mechanics of typing, English might not be their first language, they could be being playful or inventive with their spelling, they could be a poor speller! Who cares, when I know precisely what they mean, and they're equally forgiving when I type back "And it's great getting to know you to"?

This communications revolution is going to change many many things about life as we know it. And if we lose a little in the standards arena but gain in the range of people we can communicate with, is that such a bad thing?

Spelling standards? Let's berry them!

© 1996,  Rose Vines

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