Dialects of

Around 1000 AD, Pope Gregory needed a way to transfer music from Rome to France. Guido of Arezzo, a theoretician, came up with the modern system of music notation. Five lines, four spaces, easily written on your hand. Worked well for transferring thousands of chants over a three-week trip to Paris.

By a few centuries later, written notation had added rhythm. A few centuries after that, paper and the printing press became cheap, and the Petrucci press standardized the symbols that modern musicians still recognize. In the 1970's and 1980's, Radio France technology made it possible for home computer owners to create most imaginable sounds (theoretically any, given enough time, free RAM, and platter space). Today, LilyPond, Finale, Noteworthy Composer, and the like connect MIDI output with traditional, notated input.

Guitar tab, percussion tab, figured bass, jazz and commercial changes (in various traditions), MIDI, C ... just a few of the dialects that approximate musical sounds. These symbols carry meaning, they're not really the same as the meanings from 1000 AD, but musicians can read these things.

And professional musicians, if they are really ambitious to speak and perform with other musicians ... must learn all these dialects of printed music.

Email, SMS, and social communication habits have now forever changed (and continue to change) how we speak - the sounds made, the symbols chosen, the meanings packed inside. If we are ambitious people, ambitious to communicate ... we must learn and accept as many as possible.

From that plurality of dialects, a few will die off. Yep, the next generation will forget or flat out lose how to read and interpret some of that information. When I want to write for longevity, then, I do my best to make sure I choose a dialect of digital english (or of music) that will last at least as long as I will.

Perhaps your work deserves the same.