# Would the Gettysburg Address have been improved if Lincoln used emoticons? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 10, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115 "2011-01-10T17:35:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/21 "2011-01-10T21:49:39Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > This is to my point. Children are inhibited in taking a artful form of language by threat of a bad grade, which could be imposed arbitrary, sometimes the teacher may let it go or may not, which adds to the confusion which tends towards conformity and the loss of creativity. No, you miss my point. Children cannot be artful with the written word unless taught how to use it with conventional methods. When that is done with, they may learn to make art by breaking those rules. Or they may not; not everyone is an artist. But they cannot make \*art \*until they know the rules and choose to break them with intent and purpose. When was the last time you experienced teaching small children English? I’m not trying to pick a fight, I really think that things might have changed (mostly for the better) since your experiences in school. There’s a balancing act here, to be sure. On the one hand are things like “invented spelling” which, much to the surprise of researchers who thought it would free young minds to be expressive by removing the fear of wrong answers, actually didn’t help at all. Test scores and grades went down, but more importantly, so did self-esteem, while frustration went up. Kids found that they couldn’t communicate effectively if they didn’t know how to spell words, because Mom (or teacher) couldn’t figure out what “rifigor” was supposed to mean. When allowed to write with no structure, the kids wrote nonsense that frustrated both the people trying to read it and the kids trying to write it. It actually \*delayed \*literacy by quite a bit. My son was a victim of this educational fad, back in the early 90s. On the other hand is the teacher out of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, ruling with an iron ruler and screaming at the children for a spliced comma. Obviously, this kind of martinet stifles expression, as well. It sounds like what you’re familiar with, but I don’t know your age. What’s come to pass in the recent history of educational pedagogy is something in between. Kids are taught “sight words” which they’re expected to memorize by rote and use very frequently. Often there are postcards with these words plastered all over the classroom - “chair”, “sink”, “under”, “of”, etc. They’re taught phonics as well, to sound out words they don’t know that aren’t sight words. They’re encouraged to ask when they don’t know. Independent writing is mixed with dictation, where the teacher, parent or older student will write what the small child says - sometimes editing for clarity and grammar, and sometimes not. This is what my daughter, now in kindergarten, is doing, and it seems to work far better than anything else so far. Now, if you truly have a teacher who is sometimes grading for grammar and/or spelling and sometimes not, and doesn’t make that clear when giving the assignment, then yes, that’s absolutely a problem. But it’s a problem with the teacher, not with the teaching of grammar. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/22 "2011-01-10T21:50:51Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > This is to my point. Children are inhibited in taking a artful form of language by threat of a bad grade, which could be imposed arbitrary, sometimes the teacher may let it go or may not, which adds to the confusion which tends towards conformity and the loss of creativity. > > And the Gettysburg address does have ‘emoticons’, we all know them, we’ve heard it and seen it, we know the tone and inflection of the voice, \*\*when Abe pounds the podium, we know the emotion behind each and every sentence because we have all heard it, \*\*which is a much different form then written communications without emoticons. Not to nitpick, but I’m certainly not 147+ years old, and I resent the implications of my decreptitude! 😃 In all seriousness (and in a bit of shock) I will defend PART of KB’s idea. Not all teachers are themselves masters or artisans of the art of speaking or writing (more loss to us as a people) and so students are sometimes presented with the choice of being creative or being graded highly. It isn’t hard to admit that as an unfortunate state of affairs. _ **That said** _, I doubt many students are at the level of ee cummings or Maya Angelou, to have their swelling poetic or creative writing/speaking jazz improvisations entirely squelched by the experience of learning standard American grammar. I think WhyNot said it best - you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Was DaVinci’s creativity squelched because he learned classic artistic techniques? Was Michelangelo’s David less merit-worthy because he looks like a human instead of a Picasso? In point of fact, Picasso himself studied art throughout his life (father was an artist) and he USED what he learned from different styles and methods to develop his own ideas into something great - he didn’t just START by painting cubist works spontaneously with no knowledge of the basics of the medium he used. Yes, bad teaching is a drag, but don’t confuse bad teaching with the necessary process of learning the basics of communication, or really the basics of anything. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/23 "2011-01-10T21:54:44Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Music with no form is noise. Music with form that intentionally breaks away from that form with purpose and grace is art. [No reason why it can’t be both.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Machine_Music) > [@kanicbird](#): > > And the Gettysburg address does have ‘emoticons’, we all know them, _we’ve heard it and seen it, we know the tone and inflection of the voice, when Abe pounds the podium,_ we know the emotion behind each and every sentence because _we have all heard it,_ which is a much different form then written communications without emoticons. [emphasis added] You have a video recording of the original G.A.? Sweet!!! I’ll trade you for Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” tirade – bootleg quality, but it’s rare. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/24 "2011-01-10T21:58:25Z")
Children are idiots. There’s nothing about them to envy, just do what you can to get them through the whole “childhood” thing as smoothly and quickly as possible. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/25 "2011-01-10T21:59:28Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > That said I think having a strong understanding of the rules of language are not a hindrance but an aid to good communication. You are correct x 1000. If you’re going to be artful and deviate from norms it helps to know what the norm is. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/26 "2011-01-10T22:23:50Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > …students are sometimes presented with the choice of being creative or being graded highly. It isn’t hard to admit that as an unfortunate state of affairs. Even there, I’m not so sure. Creativity has it’s place, but again, it’s the fundamentals that make it possible. One needs a strong limb to hang a delicate adjective on. I’m coming at this from a weird angle, I admit. I wasn’t taught grammar in elementary school (although I couldn’t get out of spelling!) because I was quickly whisked into “accelerated” Language Arts classes. While my peers were learning the difference between a direct and indirect object, I was writing fanciful tales in Creative Writing. So far, so good, except that I was only able to do it because I have a very innate sense of writing, and because I read like a voracious book reading thing as a child. I learned grammar by immersion only, as it were. So I could write creatively, sure. Wrote my first short story in first grade, a play in second and a novel by sixth. Problem is, they were crap. Y’know, cute kid crap, but crap. The plot lines were almost non-existent, things jumped all over the place, and the sentences could outrun Secretariat. This carried over to essays written for other classes, as well. I was just too…uncontrolled. Flowery. Too many words. No one ever taught me that economy equals clarity, they simply praised me for putting dozens of words in line on a page. It was a debate class in high school which first showed me good essay writing. Make a point, support, support, make another point. Introduction, Body, Conclusion. Tell 'em what you’ll tell 'em, tell em, and tell 'em what you told 'em. It simplified and clarified my writing immensely to be given very strict guidelines. Later, in college, I took a writing class with an ex-newspaper editor for a teacher. Now not only did I have to keep my thoughts organized, but I had to keep my sentences under 12 words. And no more than 1 3+ syllable word in any sentence. Eek! I struggled against this like you wouldn’t believe, but again, giving me constraints made me learn to write better. I learned to choose words more carefully. I learned to write succinctly. Do I always write like that? Hell no. (My post is my cite.) But it made me a better writer to have limits put on me. Once I learned those rules, I learned how to break them and still write well. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/27 "2011-01-10T22:27:08Z")
[Abraham Lincoln](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096928/quotes): seven minutes ago… we, your forefathers, were brought forth upon a most excellent adventure conceived by our new friends, Bill… and Ted. These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition which was true in my time, just as it’s true today. Be excellent to each other. And… PARTY ON, DUDES! (IOW, he didn’t need emoticons since it was a speech. ;)) -XT ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/28 "2011-01-10T23:04:42Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Even there, I’m not so sure. Creativity has it’s place, but again, it’s the fundamentals that make it possible. One needs a strong limb to hang a delicate adjective on. > (massive snippage) > Do I always write like that? Hell no. (My post is my cite.) But it made me a better writer to have limits put on me. Once I learned those rules, I learned how to break them and still write well. I totally agree - I was just pointing out that there legitimately ARE some really bad teachers who I think you referred to as a ‘Pink Floyd martinet’ and those teachers can make a student choose between writing solidly and absolutely correctly, and having a little bit of slack to be creative with language where appropriate. Contrast this with teachers who are able to recognize that their student does have a grasp of the basics, and is departing from the general rules for a specific reason. (Whether or not primary school teachers should be noting or rewarding students for this type of precocious writing is not really my point.) Like I said, bad teaching is bad teaching, and I think you addressed much the same point - just because a teacher or teaching method is flawed, doesn’t mean the subject matter is unworthy or flawed itself. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2011, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/29 "2011-01-10T23:57:55Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > That is, it’s a different form of communication, in which tone of voice, pauses, even the posture of the speaker communicated things which aren’t written on the page. As Disney Audio-Animatronics Imagineers learned all too well. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/30 "2011-01-11T04:47:59Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > But, y’know, I could be entirely wrong. Maybe Lincoln really sounded like Gilbert Gottfried. Little-known fact: Lincoln broke the ice at Gettysburg by starting his speech with a version of ‘The Aristocrats.’ It was quietly edited out from most news accounts of the day. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/31 "2011-01-11T14:08:58Z")
> [@godix](#): > > A contemporary account of Lincoln’s voice. Well, a couple years after Lincolns death actually, but still written while he was within living memory. > Lincoln’s voice was, when he first began speaking, shrill, squeaking, piping, unpleasant; his general look, his form, his pose, the color of his flesh, wrinkled and dry, his sensitiveness, and his momentary diffidence, everything seemed to be against him, but he soon recovered. > > - a letter from William H. Herndon written on July 19, 1887 > Personally, this description leaves me thinking ‘helium’. Yes, historians agree Lincoln’s voice was considered high and reedy (whether that’s high in some absolute sense or ‘too high for his large frame’ is a little less clear). The deep, resonant, thoughtful tones of modern actors are probably misleading. > [@WhyNot](#): > > No, you miss my point. Children cannot be artful with the written word unless taught how to use it with conventional methods. When that is done with, they may learn to make art by breaking those rules. Or they may not; not everyone is an artist. But they cannot make \*art \*until they know the rules and choose to break them with intent and purpose. Precisely. If you’re deviating from a conventional usage because you don’t know any better, you haven’t “created” anything, you’re just ignorant. If it’s because you can’t be bothered, you’re ignorant _and lazy_. Picasso learned to paint with great control before he became famous for his crude, skewed perspective. And for the benefit of the OP: [The PowerPoint Gettysburg Address](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/) Be sure to both “Click to Start” and also hit the link at the bottom to the “related essay.” ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/32 "2011-01-11T17:08:09Z")
> [@godix](#): > > A contemporary account of Lincoln’s voice. Well, a couple years after Lincolns death actually, but still written while he was within living memory. > Lincoln’s voice was, when he first began speaking, shrill, squeaking, piping, unpleasant; his general look, his form, his pose, the color of his flesh, wrinkled and dry, his sensitiveness, and his momentary diffidence, everything seemed to be against him, but he soon recovered. > > - a letter from William H. Herndon written on July 19, 1887 > Personally, this description leaves me thinking ‘helium’. Hal Holbrook gave it his best shot in “[Sandburg’s Lincoln](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc2UgzYmwQ8).” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/33 "2011-01-11T17:13:03Z")
It’s true that a child’s creativity can be discouraged if you correct them too much, for example. On the other hand the positions quoted in the OP are all absurd. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/34 "2011-01-11T18:49:57Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > No, you miss my point. Children cannot be artful with the written word unless taught how to use it with conventional methods. When that is done with, they may learn to make art by breaking those rules. Or they may not; not everyone is an artist. But they cannot make \*art \*until they know the rules and choose to break them with intent and purpose. > > When was the last time you experienced teaching small children English? I’m not trying to pick a fight, I really think that things might have changed (mostly for the better) since your experiences in school. > > There’s a balancing act here, to be sure. On the one hand are things like “invented spelling” which, much to the surprise of researchers who thought it would free young minds to be expressive by removing the fear of wrong answers, actually didn’t help at all. Test scores and grades went down, but more importantly, so did self-esteem, while frustration went up. Kids found that they couldn’t communicate effectively if they didn’t know how to spell words, because Mom (or teacher) couldn’t figure out what “rifigor” was supposed to mean. When allowed to write with no structure, the kids wrote nonsense that frustrated both the people trying to read it and the kids trying to write it. It actually \*delayed \*literacy by quite a bit. My son was a victim of this educational fad, back in the early 90s. > > On the other hand is the teacher out of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, ruling with an iron ruler and screaming at the children for a spliced comma. Obviously, this kind of martinet stifles expression, as well. It sounds like what you’re familiar with, but I don’t know your age. > > What’s come to pass in the recent history of educational pedagogy is something in between. Kids are taught “sight words” which they’re expected to memorize by rote and use very frequently. Often there are postcards with these words plastered all over the classroom - “chair”, “sink”, “under”, “of”, etc. They’re taught phonics as well, to sound out words they don’t know that aren’t sight words. They’re encouraged to ask when they don’t know. Independent writing is mixed with dictation, where the teacher, parent or older student will write what the small child says - sometimes editing for clarity and grammar, and sometimes not. This is what my daughter, now in kindergarten, is doing, and it seems to work far better than anything else so far. > > Now, if you truly have a teacher who is sometimes grading for grammar and/or spelling and sometimes not, and doesn’t make that clear when giving the assignment, then yes, that’s absolutely a problem. But it’s a problem with the teacher, not with the teaching of grammar. Thank you **WhyNot** , very well written and taken A+ 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115/35 "2011-01-11T19:21:08Z")
Emotions are part of who we are 🆒 , speech carries emotions which helps us communicate effectively 🙂 , the written word not so much ☹ , though it is possible :dubious:. Taking a written communication with the wrong emotional intent behind it leads to a change of meaning and misunderstanding 😕 , to the point that the very opposite of what is intended is conveyed :mad: . Effective communication should include emotional intent :D, emoticons are one way of doing such :smack: . [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-gettysburg-address-have-been-improved-if-lincoln-used-emoticons/567115.md?page=1)