February 3, 2026
When the only comment is a link
Machinery and English Style (1904)
A 1904 hot take says gadgets are wrecking our writing
TLDR: A 1904 essay claims machines like the telegraph and typewriter pushed English toward short, punchy, headline-style writing. The sole comment was an archive link, serving a “read the source” mood and underscoring how today’s texting worries echo a very old debate about tech shaping language.
A century-old clapback is trending again: a 1904 essay argues that gadgets—the typewriter, shorthand, and the telegraph—didn’t just speed up messages, they reshaped how English is written. Think shorter words, punchier lines, and headlines that do the heavy lifting. Sounds familiar? It’s basically the prequel to texts and tweets.
The community reaction? Minimalist to the point of art. One user, mitchbob, dropped an archive link and ghosted. No flamewar, no nitpicks—just a mic-drop: here are the receipts. That lone comment set the tone: less opinion, more primary source.
With so little chatter, the subtext did all the screaming. You can practically hear the two usual camps forming offstage: the ‘nothing is new under the sun’ crowd nodding at 1904’s take, and the ‘every era panics about new tech’ skeptics rolling their eyes. Meanwhile, language nerds would be circling the bit on telegraph shorthand—lists like “ak” for “acknowledge”—as proto-abbreviations that predate LOL by a century.
Jokes wrote themselves, even if they didn’t hit the thread: “Old man yells at cloud” energy, and “TL;DR was invented in Morse code.” The essay even drags early dictation machines and praises the power of headlines—aka, the ancestor of clickbait. The vibe: yesterday’s tech panic reads exactly like today’s, receipts attached.
Key Points
- •The essay argues modern communication tools—telegraph, typewriter, shorthand—significantly influence English style.
- •Even writers who do not use these tools are affected through popular vocabulary and usage shaped by mechanical constraints.
- •The author focuses on tracing the telegraph’s influence on word choice and rhetorical forms, and analyzing shorthand systems.
- •Phillips Code (telegraphers’ shorthand) is illustrated with abbreviations and a compressed example of formal text.
- •The piece notes impacts from dictation habits via typewriters, the failure of the graphophone for composition, and the influence of newspaper headlines.