Sep. 17

   In recent years, Internet has been a part of people's life, especially to the youth. In the virtual world, people build up their communities, talk openly and freely, and even develop lots of Internet slang terms, such as "dinosaurs" for ugly women and "PK" for competition. Since the slang becomes increasingly popular, an idea arises that we can use it in news and formal documents. The assumption seems reasonable, but we may find it does not hold water by taking a close look into the subject.
   As we know, news is usually characterised by its conciseness and accuracy, most of which should be serious and solemn; news of economy and politics are in particular. And formal documents should be really formal, differentiated from informal documents. All the factors request that the language characters of news and formal documents, government files and textbooks included, should be official and standardized. But Internet slang is often casual, simple and catchy. In this sense, it does not agree with news and formal documents, because it fails to meet the requirements of style and occasion.
   Besides, slang is mostly created and suggested by the young who often surf the Internet. It's quite popular and prevailing among them, indeed; however, for those who do not get on-line regularly, like the elder and busy workers, Internet slang terms are not exposed to them. Consider this: if the slang was dispersed and interspersed in every newspaper and news broadcast, could they follow what they are reading or hearing? Obviously, they would have difficulty in understanding.
   In addition, slang changes constantly and quickly beyond expectation. It goes so far as to emerge and spread just on account of a small event or a boy's one word. As a majority of people are logging in on the Internet at anytime, anywhere, the slang is being updated almost every day. How can we catch up with such a changeable and unsteady dictionary, if we were to apply slang in news and formal documents? What's worse, too much use of slang would easily spoil the conventional features of a language,  stopping younger generation from mastering the real Chinese.
   To sum up, it is not suitable to use Internet slang in news and formal documents. And it is necessary to regulate and purify our language while developing it.