:(

If you can read this article and not weep, you're made of tougher stuff than I am:

Of last year's 10 best-selling novels (in Japan), five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. ... Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold. "They don't read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them," she said.

About ten years ago, I toyed with the beginnings of a novel, set in the not-too-distant future, that involved the nearly complete deterioration of language -- not in terms of its quality; in terms of it as a concept. I abandoned it for several reasons, but maybe it's time to revisit the terrain.