OK kids, the party is over. You had your fun, now go to bed. Maybe I’m just getting old and cantankerous, and maybe I should be more understanding the way I thought adults should be when I was a kid, but this IM / texting cellphone madness has got to stop before Dax Shepard becomes a lawyer.
I’ve heard the arguments from both sides, and one side is full of crap. Some “scienticians” tell us that as society evolves, language will evolve with it, as can be seen when you compare modern texts to classic materials from the 14th century. (Did you know that “S” and “F” used to be the same letter?) This is not evolution, this is insanity. We’re raising an entire generation of people who are not only unable to spell, but unable to write down a complete thought. Don’t even get me started on the plague of ebonics. Of all the things that we have wrought with technology, the texter’s shorthand has got to be the worst (Yes, WindowsME, I see you over there). I remember they days when “LOL” actually meant that you made an audible expression of mirth.
Am I out to lunch here? Should I just sit down and embrace the future, or should we be seriously concerned about the crude truncations of the modern teen?
["User Input" is the AtomicToasters Question of the Day™ asking you, the teeming millions, to answer our pressing questions.]
I'm with you. The ability to communicate is critical, particularly in the workplace. If kids are being raised to think that TXT-speak is OK, and teachers aren't enforcing proper grammar grammar these damn kids with their LOLs and ROTFLMAOcopters will wind up trying to send me an e-mail at work with, "Can u send the TPS report 2 me LOL?"
At which time I'll go all Falling Down on them.
[youtube -eREiQhBDIk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eREiQhBDIk youtube]
I sometimes evaluate resumes for technical positions at the firms I work with. If I see poor grammar, sloppy language, or even a hint of lol-speak on a resume, into the trash it goes. If people can't take the pains to present themselves well for a first impression, they're wasting their time and mine.
i am not *that* young (quickly approaching 30) I text… i refuse to use "texting shorthand"… i spell everything out… make complete sentences and use proper grammar. i do not agree with the use of "text shorthand" for anything other than 'cute kitty pictures'… most of the time, when i receive a message with anything resembling 'omw' or 'omg' or 'wtf' i respond with "what??" (not because i don't know what it means… but if someone is going to take the time to send me something, then dammit.. i expect them to show me the respect of actually typing/saying what they mean..) or sometimes… i'll have some fun… for all i know.. 'wtf' means "who's the faerie?" so i respond with 'you are, yes you are. you special little figment of our collective imagination'
now slow the F*&% DOWN!!! this is a neighborhood!
I text all the time. With my wife, with the neighbor that watches our dog during the day, my sister, etc. It has become a pretty good way of keeping in touch when you don't have the time to have a real-time conversation.
I'm with you, though. I spell everything out. I do you WTF from time to time, but I try to avoid LOL. If I do you ROTFLMAO, you can bet that I'm being sarcastic.
amen brother.
I asked one of the of the supervisors in the shop to do something today, and no word of a lie, he said "WTF?!". I asked him if he was a 14 year old girl.
This was an actual conversation, not a text.
Interestingly, in a post where we are bemoaning the passing of proper grammar, my grammar has been epically bad.
There's a middle ground to be struck. Taking a hard line against colloquialisms*, just makes you sound like my grandfather, who's incapable of ordering a Taco at Rubios without getting into a whole thing about something.
*holy shit! spelled right on the first try!
Idiot-speak for everything makes you an idiot, but there's a reason for shorthand. Beyond that, abbreviations can take on a life of their own: WTF has a nice ring to it, more so than typing out "what the fuck?". I do my best to make my overuse of such things clearly comically overdone: W86MTAWD FTMFW! or the like.
Orders of magnitude worse than LOL-speak is the pathetic text that passes for English that's infected craigslist and facebook postings. Dammit people, capitalization is not that hard to figure out, and your browser has a built-in spell checker!
i CAN HAZ PROPPUR GRAMARZ?
(good god.. what have i done????((i couldn't resist)))
Apart from the lolspeak and the overuse of punctuation, I was thrilled by the proper amount of closing brackets.
Thank you!
If I could just get everyone use "its" and "it's" properly, I would be happy.
As someone for whom English is a second language, I take great care of my spelling and grammar. Why can't other do it as well? Is it too much to ask to take a few seconds to proof read an Email or text before sending it?
Unless you have an unbelievably expensive texting plan that charges by the character, or are still using a T9 keyboard, there is no real need to compress your data, aside, you know, from laziness…
As a wise man once said;
Ohhhhh… If you want it to be possessive,
It's just "I-T-S."
But if it's supposed to be a contraction,
Then it's "I-T-apostrophe-S,"
Scalawag.
In the past language and spelling evolved mostly because people lived in isolated pockets (which produced fragmented dialects) and were mostly illiterate. In the English language, as the general public gained more access to literacy and people like Samuel Johnson developed standards for spelling and grammar, things more or less stabilized for nearly two centuries. That's one reason why we can easily read English books from 1800 but struggle to read them from a century earlier. This standardization is breaking down again not because of isolation or lack of education, but simply out of sheer laziness and incompetence. At least twice a week I receive emails that I honestly cannot understand because of poor grammar and spelling. I've sat with coworkers and laughed at how poorly so-called 'professionals' express themselves. The emphasis that schools place today on turning our kids into widget-makers is turning them into zomg teh stoopids.
Now get the hell off my lawn.
<img src="http://imagemacros.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/lol_wut1.jpg" width=500>
There was a time when I used a fair amount of text-speak in my chats, text and IM's. Over the years, I have slowly dropped almost all of them (granted, I gotsta have a FTW and WTF every now and then). Now, when I see some kid texting on the television, I have no clue what the fuck they are typing on about. I just assume its all nonsense that I am better off not comprehending.
Out front, I have a vicious bias: If you write poorly, and I do not personally know otherwise, I think you are stupid.
That said, the role of the internet means that people who might have been blissfully illiterate are forced to read and type on some basic level. This does point language towards simplicity, but that should be fought only when it tends to limit expression or thought itself. With a taste for sarcasm and English as a whole, I savor words used creatively to more perfectly convey a point. Words are a tool, and every tool is also a toy, so I will continue to play and push the limits of what I can say. And I'm a poor appreciator of poetry, but there is beauty in the speech and text we will encounter.
Which would be a good rock lyric.
I might go with a 50-50 potential of plain stupidity, but also a distinct possibility for lazy and/or a sheep-like product of their environment where no one forces them to do any better.
I went back to school in my early thirties to get an engineering degree and I was astounded at the poor grammar, punctuation and general writing ability of many of my fellow students (not all, to be fair, but many). And I don't mean in general personal communication, but in technical reports and other written work that was being graded. But what astounded me more was that they were rarely penalized for handing in shite that I would be embarrassed to have written while on the 3rd day of a bender. I'm not sure what it's like in the States, but my experience here (University of Waterloo) was that the undergrad work is generally graded by grad students who are often no more than a few years older than the undergrads. It would also seem that the undergrads either don't recognize the written work as crap, or simply don't care. So really, unless people are being called to task for their crappy writing, how is it ever going to get better or at least maintain the level that most of us seem to lament the passing thereof?
(Did that last sentence make sense? 3rd day of a bender…)
It's said Americans deify education while denigrating learning. That said, I feel my high school and university experiences could have gone much further to actually teach me something.
It's also true in the real world and I think it has always been that way. Most engineers and technical people are terrible writers and many engineering schools in the US don't put enough emphasis on communication skills. My late father was an aeronautical engineer since the late '40s and he told me that poor writing was very common even then. Being a good writer and showing willingness to prepare reports and documents have opened all sorts of doors for me in the engineering world. If you have learned the skills, then you have a valuable asset that's prized by many employers.
Engineers are notoriously bad at communicating, particularly through the written word. It probably has to do with the fact that most engineers aren't "people people". Like I always say, "If I wanted to deal with people I would have skipped college and worked retail."
I'm in a similar situation, here. I'll be 46 soon and am a freshman BSME candidate. Generally I'm old enough to be a father to most of my classmates. My professor in Design and Graphics does not brook sloppiness.
I'm a team leader on a project and it is amazing to see what the homework assignments look like that I'm handing back to my teammates when they can't be arsed to be in class, and the professor doesn't want to hold on to the stuff. At least I know that I won't have much in the way of competition when I graduate. On the other hand, I really hope some of these fools never land up on any critical projects; and I also have other fingers.
Wow. Kudos for doing it in your 40's. I was worried my brain had shriveled beyond fresh learning when I went back, and I was only 32.
I hope I'm still doing it in my 40s.
Seriously, Mr. gardener does deserve kudos for going back to school in his 40s.
It's been suggested that we can grow new brain cells. But they have a shelf life, days or weeks, waiting to be used the next time you learn something. Coasting along in the same routine, you'll be stuck with what you have.
In brief, knowledge is brain power.