reflextns on txtng2

It happens. After all, who wants to use more thumbstrokes? Who wants to slow down the effluvial ephemera of quotidian trivia? The "it" I refer to above -- an "it" typed without its antecedent -- is the shortening, the abbreviating, the consequent depunctuation of texting.

I do it.

I've done it.

Both with and without guilt.

I'll not do "it" when I want to be pedantic, when I want to prove a point to the recipient that I'm either not uneducated or that I was an English major or that I do not subscribe to the vulgar laziness of texting, the habits of stark simplicity.

But other times I do subscribe to minimalist fervor, an icon of the age.

And linguistically we know that language inexorably grows, organically, toward simplicity, as a sign of its sophistication!

So, when I text I sometimes will say to myself, hey, the question mark was obvious just by the phrasing, it couldn't be anything but a question. or I mutter to self that periods commas or semicolons are just getting in the way course they no wot i mean who needs caps either its all undrstd txtng is fun after all japanse grls hv wrttn txt novels etc no end pt

Texting.

Txtng

Just some thoughts.

txtng txtng123

OMG LOL CU L8TR!

I have an ambivalent history and relationship with texting. First the brief history:

• Until recently, our plan was such that each text was charged, something like thirty-five cents. This was because of the need to text primarily to Europe.
• With so-called unlimited texting now as part of our plan (of course, texting is paid for, but in lump sum), I more readily send and receive texts.
• I say "more readily," but I am not an agile texter, don't care to be, and my nearly obsolete phone does not facilitate rapid texting.
• I accept and enjoy the simplicity of texting when I want a very brief exchange -- the same way that a screened message on an old-fashioned answering machine can be both convenient and diplomatic. And it saves time.
  
• I recognize that texting is lousy at conveying tone.
• Texting can also be a total waste of time.
  
• K?

Now let's talk briefly about the diction and language of texting:

• I am neither a scold nor one who is afraid of changes in the language. Language has always been dynamic, including its spelling conventions. English is enriched by slang and other revitalizing influences.
• I have read that Japanese young women have written best-selling novels as texts.
• WOW!
• I have heard that text diction is becoming acceptable in student essays. My view? Not so good. Wrong context. There's a time to wear fancy clothes and a time for grunge. Same with language.
• As a poet, I like the forced minimalism of texting. You are really driven to cut to the chase, to be telegraphically stark -- not just with wording but also with punctuation. In that sense, it can make you a better self-editor: "I did not need that many words. I certainly did not need such a highfalutin word."
• But, alas, let us not forgot that just as simpler-than-Hemingway texting has its place so does serpentine and garrulous prose, with qualifiers and asides -- like this! -- as practiced by Proust, Joyce, [note serial comma] Kierkegaard or Faulkner, and that such florid and meandering prose -- which would be hard on one's thumbs -- paints more than thumbnail sketches: more like an intricate pointilism or a broad canvas of curvilinear strokes, dialogue, [note serial comma again] and nuanced depiction, fiction or not.
  

SUMTHNG 4 SOME1 TO THNK ABT

p.s. Although texting while driving will make you or others a post-factum postscript, many people persist in doing it, thinking, "I CN HNDLE IT."

Those Pesky Vowels, Again!

News Item:

WASHINGTON -- Majestic Athletic spelled things out quite clearly Tuesday: It was the uniform company's fault that Washington Nationals Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman wore jerseys reading "Natinals" during a game last week.

Dunn and Zimmerman donned the shirts that were missing an "o" for the first three innings of Washington's 3-2 loss to the Florida Marlins on Friday night. They eventually changed into jerseys with the team nickname spelled correctly.

"All of us at Majestic Athletic want to apologize to both the Washington Nationals and Major League Baseball for accidentally omitting the 'o' in two Nationals jerseys," Majestic Athletic president Jim Pisani said in a statement distributed at Nationals Park on Tuesday.

"We take 100 percent responsibility for this event and we regret any embarrassment for the Nationals organization, players and fans," the statement continued.

Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

As I said in my recent post, beware of those missing vowels!

They're a matter of life or dearth.

(Well, watch out for extra consonants, too.)

Singe of the Thymes

Saw one of those illuminated signs along a well-traveled thoroughfare today, flashing two alternating messages, presumably to motorists (pedestrians! avert thy eyes! Not a problem; there are few sidewalks in Suburbia, folks):

DRIVE
WITH CARR

followed by:

LAWS ENFORRED

Memory is tricky, so I may be off by an R or two.

I know I'm a stickler for grammar and spelling and all that jizz (I mean jazz, which, according to many etymological sources, shares the same taboo origin), but a few questions come to mind:

1. Is a carr some new type of hybird vehickle?

2. Are carrfull drivers occupied by more than three people?

3. Are the laws enforred as carrfully as the singe writters in this well-healed town (well-heeled financially but not with respect to walkability -- and ain't that the way it usually goes?)?

That's awl for now, fulks.

Spell Right. . . .Or Die!

Spell right . . . or die!

I guess that's how it would've been in the Old School days of Marxist-Leninist rule in Russia. These days, if you screw up your spelling or grammar, you're just sent back to school. . . .rather than sent to a gulag in Siberia.

The governor of Lenin's hometown region of Ulyanovsk (who presumably is a flawless speller and grammarian) was so fed up with bad spelling and grammar that he ordered some 2,000 bureaucrats back to school.

What next? Serial killings as punishment for the the abuse and misuse of serial commas? Would these be commakaze missions?

What awards go to the "Most Imporved Speller"?