Gretchen McCulloch opens by arguing that internet language — emoji use, punctuation choices, meme formats — follows genuine, describable grammatical patterns, even though it looks chaotic or 'incorrect' to traditional grammarians.

Why this matters linguistically:

• Linguistics studies how language is actually used, not how it 'should' be used according to arbitrary tradition
• Internet conventions show consistent internal rules just as rigorous as formal grammar, even if less consciously codified
• Dismissing internet language as simple carelessness misses the genuinely sophisticated communication system that's emerged

This opening frames the rest of the book as serious linguistic analysis of a genuinely new dialect, not casual cultural commentary.