The End of Civilization

Just as I was becoming depressed over reading that 2/3 of teenagers say that they have used things like emoticons in school papers, I became more so reading that the emeritus executive director of the National Writing Project considers it simply a matter of the language evolving.

Devolving, perhaps.

Reading this gave me a nightmare of a student trying to quote from Shakespeare while writing a paper on Julius Caesar:

But Caesar was ambitious --
And these are honorable men. :p

I think I need a Valium.

In addition to holding the above mentioned title of emeritus executive director, Richard Sterling is a professor at Cal Berkeley. However, he claims that when asked by his son for one, he could come up with no good reason for using capital letters to begin sentences.

Try clarity for the reader.