Would that I should be so eloquent in my use of the English language!
We must all strive to this level of excellence.
punctuation whats punctuation i dont need any punctuation the teacher only makes me use periods because shes mean my daddy used work in a prizon
On another note, how is it relevant the the letter came from a Southern state? I’m sure we have plenty of kids throughout the country who are equally ignorant of the fine points of both the law and the English language as it is usually written.
I have doubts about the veracity of this letter. It’s so bad that it could be an attempt to make p2p folks look stupid. And why did they fel the need to say it was from a southern state? Maybe to smear p2p folks with a negative stereotype?
Perhaps we ought to declare letters such as the one in the OP as belonging to a sub-language known as “Chattish.” It’s an abbreviated form of English with its own unique syntax, used primarily in an electronic setting. (Though it’s spreading quickly to other areas.)
The linguist in me finds it quite interesting. I’m not one of those who bemoan the bastardization of English, since I’m sensible enough to realize that every generation bastardizes it just a little bit more. In other words, we ain’t spoke the King’s English for a looooong time, so why worry about it now?
I’ve mused that one day we may come to a time when we have High English and a sort of erstaz slang used commonly by the masses.
Have you been on any chat areas lately? People really do talk just like this, it’s horrible. Head hurts just reading it.
I knew I smelled something… :rolleyes:
I like that idea. Trying to look at the letter in the OP and work out what was incorrect about it was…frightening. Thinking of it as being in Chattish - oh well, that’s okay then. It’s not supposed to be coherent.
I think that would also solve a lot of the grammar arguments on these Boards. These Boards are in English, not Chattish. If you can only type Chattish, you will have a problem here. I am not interested in participating in Chattish Boards - I prefer my written language to have the same meaning when I type it as when the recipient reads it.
Language like the OP link is the main reason I stay away from online interaction as much as possible. The SDMB is really the only exception. What a shining jewel of learned discourse this virtual community must be!
When using instant messenger services I tend to type out all of the words, and not use numbers as letters, syllables, or words. I will occationally use non-abreviation, non-letter-number-swapping leet-speak, such as phyzzyx (for physics) or RoXXoRz.
Oops. That last bit was supposed to be in response to this: