If you're like me, the title of this post may be half readable. The other half may look like gobbledygook. If you're still like me, you'd love to use a site like this to help you understand what the heck the title is saying. Why, you might be asking yourself, is Scott bringing up 12-year-old girl text messaging habits? I'm glad I, erm....you asked! I stumbled across this article on BBC yesterday and found it neat that 12-year-old girls now have ammunition to use in their battle against The Man when they're told to put the phone away in class, or they'll lose it until the end of the school year.
Ha, I love watching my mom's face when my friends and I talk. She says it's a mixture of quotes from Office Space, Anchorman (other movies of similar nature) and then abbreviated words or inside jokes that she just will never understand. She's even pretty hip, but it's simply a generational thing. Funny cartoon.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the full QWERTY keyboards on new phones would encourage fully spelled words, but Twitter and it's character limit quickly squashed that potential. It was like a dying patient who gets a heart beat after being shocked by a defibrillator only to die 30 seconds later. (Sorry, I've been watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs recently.)
ReplyDeleteAgreed on the QWERTY/Touchscreen keyboard issue; with my iPhone, I rarely (if ever) use abbreviated words...
ReplyDeleteHaha yes! Grace you hit on the holy grail of obscure communication, quoting movies and TV shows! I mean, things really got out of hand fast. I have certain friends where quotes are maybe 50% of the things we say, which causes much eye-rolling by girlfriends and others who don't participate.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of how my brother learned to type fast by playing EverQuest. I do find it hard to believe that kids who text a ton are getting any better at grammar. Even though they may understand the basic words they're replacing, is a kid who writes UR all the time comprehending the difference between you're and your in normal language, or between it's and its and all that stuff?
Scott for someone who usually drops the creative links, I was saddened to see you went with a wiki link for The Man when there are so many creative alternatives out there.
On the other hand I'm someone who completely eschews most grammar when typing gchat (the only instant message service I use anymore) - as Grace can attest to, I basically forgo all punctuation and capitalization. My words flow into things like doesnt with no apostrophes and all that.
ReplyDeleteThis is however a feature of Cormac McCarthy in much of his writing so I feel comforted somehow by that. And despite how great I think I am with the English language I still go out and make typos regularly.
(a) If I'm not mistaken, they're improving their spelling, not grammar, so there.
ReplyDelete(b) Screw you link-nazi...
(c) My favorite "The Man" link from you was "alternatives" - Chuck was here never gets old...