Text Talk

[Chocolatey]

wot do ya fink of all dis text talk - z way to shorten z words - is it gr8

[Spike]

I hate it !

I like to write in the correct grammar with a few spelling mistakes along the way oops!

[Horus]

I agree with Spike on this one, the development of text speak came about simply because of mobile phones. When you had to select a single letter option from a choice of three plus try to punctuate a sentence, then I agree it was very slow and difficult. It was and still is the greatest limitation of using a mobile phone as a written form of communication. It has the same function as using Morse code and in my opinions the same drawbacks. By their very nature Text Messaging and Morse Code have to be kept brief and the message passed on as fast as possible with no other unnecessary clutter within the message, unfortunately it is this clutter that makes a conversation what it is. In addition, we are communicating with each other on a forum, that being a place where we all interact by communicating our views to each other, in this particular case in English. We are all using English keyboards to type and by and large we can all speak and or read the English language. There are many people out there to whom English is not their first language and we owe it to them to make our posts as clear and concise as possible for their benefit. If I were to start typing my posts in Swahili, I am sure that a lot of people would be confused, using text speak on a forum is no different. There is also the age difference, if a forum were to be completely dominated by young people then text speak may well be OK as other age groups would probably have no interest in it in the first place, but on a forum where some age related experience may well be of benefit to other members we should do nothing to deter their input by using a form of communication that they are not happy with. Finally I would ask you to consider the following, ‘In order to write or read in text speak, you must first of all know what the original word is that you are abbreviating’. The human brain will try to make sense of anything that it reads and if you are educated enough it will fill in the missing gaps, therefore msg. will be interpreted as message or massage depending upon the context of the conversation, likewise letters such as 4 U, RU, are similar when inserted in a line of text. So if the trend continues we will have a generation or more of people who do not actually recognise the full word when they see it written down.