Thx. G2G. LOL. ROTFL. OMG. Don't you hate texting lingo? Call me old-school, but I do. I can understand it (I knew every single one that I listed, for instance), but that doesn't mean that I have to agree with it. As they say, know your enemy.
What's wrong with abbreviating words to save time, some ask? It's more than abbreviating words to save time, in my opinion. It's slowly chipping away at the very foundations of the English language.
Besides, any one who has enough time to type out thousands of text messages a month--and "For a teenager to send thousands of text messages a month is not unusual," said John Johnson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless (Washington Post)--could be spending their time more constructively, by volunteering at a soup kitchen or finishing homework.
For someone who doesn't even have a cell phone, I might seem a little too zealous about getting people to stop using text lingo. Why am I so fired up? It's all about writing. Teens are beginning to slip text lingo into their formal writing assignments. According to the USA Today, "two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in." Not only is this annoying to teachers, who have to decipher it, it's not conducive to their education. I was teaching a professional development session recently and a teacher who taught high school criminal justice mentioned that many of her students use texting lingo in their cases, which is worrying, not just because they're in school, but also because that's not something you can do in a court of law.
Some people say that text lingo is a shortcut. There are no shortcuts in life. Eventually, using text lingo will catch up with you and you'll have to take the long way home. But that's enough for now.
G2G.
What's wrong with abbreviating words to save time, some ask? It's more than abbreviating words to save time, in my opinion. It's slowly chipping away at the very foundations of the English language.
Besides, any one who has enough time to type out thousands of text messages a month--and "For a teenager to send thousands of text messages a month is not unusual," said John Johnson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless (Washington Post)--could be spending their time more constructively, by volunteering at a soup kitchen or finishing homework.
For someone who doesn't even have a cell phone, I might seem a little too zealous about getting people to stop using text lingo. Why am I so fired up? It's all about writing. Teens are beginning to slip text lingo into their formal writing assignments. According to the USA Today, "two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in." Not only is this annoying to teachers, who have to decipher it, it's not conducive to their education. I was teaching a professional development session recently and a teacher who taught high school criminal justice mentioned that many of her students use texting lingo in their cases, which is worrying, not just because they're in school, but also because that's not something you can do in a court of law.
Some people say that text lingo is a shortcut. There are no shortcuts in life. Eventually, using text lingo will catch up with you and you'll have to take the long way home. But that's enough for now.
G2G.