Skeptics contend that bad writing is on the rise. The argument is hard to deny, for the simple reason that in the age of the Internet, everyone’s a writer. It used to be that to get published, a writer needed a publisher, and publishers were picky about whom they spent money on. Now, everyone is self-published, and it turns out we are somewhat less demanding of ourselves than, say, Simon & Schuster would be.

The difference between the skeptics and me, though, is that I accept and celebrate this development. I refuse to define the new writing norm as bad. It is simply different. Rather than deride it, I have decided to analyze it, using the very instrument that created the New Norm: the Internet, with its vast powers to search and quantify. Here are just a few of the new laws of writing that I have discovered.

1. The Law of Conservation of Adjectives. In the old days, writers needed to burden themselves with an arsenal of modifiers — adjectives that deliver subtly different connotation and emphasis. No more. Today, one only needs the adverb “really,” and the degree of emphasis is indicated by how many times it is used. “Really, really happy” would formerly have been “elated.” “Really, really, really, really happy” would formerly have been “orgasmic.” The “really” phenomenon is so strong that its limits cannot be plumbed even by the mighty Google search engine, which restricts inquiries to no more than 32 words. I can, however, report that people have used at least 32 reallys very often. How often? Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really often. Thirty-two reallys, in quotes, returns more than 3 million hits. Here, some of the words following 32 or more reallys: “like girls,” “hot guy,” “old,” “cool” and “want this” (it’s a shirt). A quick anecdotal sampling suggests the most common word following 32 reallys is “bored.”