Long Live the Interjection! Yay!

I can’t believe I’ve made it 144 posts without going all grammar-geek on y’all, but the times they are a changin’. Slate has a good article about how the internet is giving credibility to the redheaded-stepchild of grammar: the interjection!. If you’re not sure what an interjection! is, check out the Wikipedia entry, or listen to this School House Rock explanation:

Interjections

(From Eddie From Ohio’s “School House Rock Medley”, live at Bad Habits 12/15/1998)

The article’s most salient point is that “Interjections are suitable for online writing…because of the way online writing mimics speech.” Yay! He got it exactly right! Interjections like “ha”, and “meh” are perfect in tone for the internet, where tone is otherwise difficult to get across. How many times have you written a sarcastic IM or email to someone only to have them take it seriously? But something like “That movie was great, ha ha” is nearly impossible to mis-interpret.

In addition to clarifying tone, interjections are great for expressing a lot of emotion with very few words. For example, the answer to the question “What did you think of the movie?” could be expressed with “Well, I thought it was ok, but nothing special”, or more briefly, and equally evocatively, with “Meh”. There’s an elegance to it, isn’t there?

So up with interjections, the clarity and spice of the grammar world. Hooray!