EP Diary Forum

What's wrong with local flavors?

You make an interesting point, but I believe the graphic and typographic and language idiosyncracies you're talking about will slowly disappear because of the web. Today, these communications styles are localized because print is localized. Most design and type is done for local markets, and the people who do the work usually have a local perspective. Once the bulk of graphic communications starts with the web, those print-related local flavors will wither away.

Moviemaking, conversely, has an international perspective, and -- outside of the determinedly parochial art house films -- it's very hard to guess the home town of a director, a set designer, a cinematographer or even an actor. (The new Bruce Willis film "The Fifth Element" is a case in point.)

Some say that hit moviemaking follows an American template, but there's enough cross-pollination between the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand that we can at least point to an Anglo-Austral-American mass culture. There are still regional accents, but it's getting harder and harder to tell them apart.

(I heard a funny story in Kuala Lumpur: Asian cops complain that people who are arrested expect to be read their "Miranda" rights because they've seen so many U.S. police dramas where the perpetrator insists on his *U.S.* constitutional right to counsel.)

The English text in all of these web pages will also standardize, but I'll bet it will also be transformed by writers in Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Munich, Capetown and Bangalore for whom English is a second tongue. Churchill's remark that the U.S. and the U.K. are two countries divided by a common language should be scaled up to include all the English-speakers and writers on the web.

(For more on English, see the Writing forum at the link below.)

Writing for Interactive Media Forum