Thrillers




Fiction with an edge




Sunday 18 March 2018

OMG ...

"Children shouldn't have to worry about spelling ... or grammar - it stifles their young minds. We should just let the essence of their creativity shine through - no matter what."

I was told this 20 years ago by a teacher who felt that corrective red marks on a child's school work was a disincentive and not only inhibited the creative flow, but could bring problems with self -confidence in later life. 

Whether you agree with that philosophy or not, the written word is changing. Text-speak is here among our everyday written language and, like the boundary of the mind, once expanded, will never shrink back. 

So, what's happening in the world of text-speak? 

Words and phrases are now abbreviated to two or three letters (cd -could / wd - would / u -you / pls - please / BTW / OMG / LOL ). Emojis tell us how someone feels. The confusion over there, their and they're - your and you're - it's and its can have us pondering the meanings of posts. The apostrophe is being used for all things plural (MOT's - apple's - snake's). Dates: the 50s, 60s, 70s etc., have become 50's, 60's and 70's. Phrases like "Totes amaze" (totally amazing) -  GR8 M8 (great mate) - have many of us (oldies) stopping to decipher the message on our mobile phone from an eight year old grandchild - to whom phonetic and abbreviated speech is becoming more and more commonplace. 

Is the use of text-speak increasing because our lives are so busy that we must save time anywhere we can? Is it just a lazy use of language? Or, perhaps, a need to fit in with our peers - to be one of the crowd? Or is it that it's become a God-send to the person who finds spelling and grammar difficult to grasp. Does someone who has no particular problem with the English language use text-speak - or soldier on with correctly spelled and grammatically sound posts, complete with commas and full-stops?   

And what happens about legal documents? Will they ever be written in text-speak? Or will there be a cache (possibly 'cash') of lawyers retained for the purpose of composing legal papers at higher and higher fees? I wonder what would happen if the most prolific of text-speak users received his / her house deeds / divorce papers / income tax demand, written in phonetics and emojis? Would he or she feel overjoyed that authority has embraced this modernity - or feel cheated that the documents aren't in the English of the echelon of society which makes the rules?  

Should we allow all aspects of text-speak to creep into full acceptance in everyday written usage? Is little Johnnie's (or Mary's) essay going to be littered with abbreviated words and symbols - something to be deciphered rather than read? Will big John (and Mary's) application to university / job application be full of the same text-speak?  Will it matter? (I suppose if someone decided to associate its use with an assumption that the applicant has come from a particular background and views that as a problem, then it might. Paranoid - moi?)

Could we end up with a number of people unable to read or write anything other than text-speak? Would official forms have to reflect this anomaly?  

Will authors of the future write in two formats? One for those who have grown up with and prefer  text-speak as their reading (and writing) style and one for those who still want to read stories incorporating correct spelling and grammar? 

Was the thinking of that teacher 20 years ago prophetic - or the beginning of the end for the English language as we know it?  I wonder. 








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