Agreed. I also type out emails as if I were writing a letter (business and personal) because I think it’s the same as sending someone a letter, only a different medium. Just because it’s electamatronical doesn’t mean I’m going to start typing like my cat jumped on the keyboard.
I always try to type full words too. But when texting, I wonder if it’s not better to match the other person’s style a little. I suppose it depends on how bad their style is, and how much I feel like I’m compromising my values. I’m fine with typing “u” for “you”, but I feel like a jackass typing “2morrow.”
That’s nothing new. Your (text-receiving) phone has always had an email address. You don’t need a website. You just need to find out the domain name. It’s usually something like this:
1[AREACODE][PHONENUMBER]@phonecompany.sms.net
In fact, around 1998 I started to try to get colleagues to send me email as text messages when I was in the field. But they just couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea.
Omar Little’s"WTF" was probably because if you wait til you’re at your computer to send a text you’ve kind of defeated the whole purpose.
I use Google Voice to send a lot of text messages. And I nvr abrv8 wrds. However, the messages end up being kind of lengthy. Google Voice lets me know how many messages it will take if you send it. You get 1, 2 or “really”.
Brace yourselves, my twenty-something kids recently expressed their annoyance at their friends using textspeak in face to face conversations. :rolleyes:
I blame Noah Webster. Really. Before Webster there wasn’t really “one right way” to spell and write things. As long as your audience understood you, you could express yourself in lots of different ways. This was more chaotic, of course, with even published newspapers doing things like alternating the spelling of words between columns or editors. Webster, who may well have been an Obsessive(not compulsive, just obsessive), wanted to free the US of British Culture.
Were it not for this particular, peculiar, and obsessive person, the concept of one right way to spell might not really exist.
So when I see people communicating in a way which doesn’t match Webster’s vision, which most people have internalized, it feeds that little corner of my heart which is an anarchist and yearns 2 b fre.
Njy,
S
Ok, I’ll ask here since it’s REALLY been bugging me.
There is this (new?) trend of writing words and adding multiple duplicates of the final letter. I don’t know anyone personally who does this, I’ve only seen it on lamebook.
Examples:
What is with that?! It would make it take a lot longer to type a message. I just don’t get it. Does anyone understand this?
Ah, OK.
I don’t text because it’s hard for me and I don’t like it. But some of my friends only like to communicate that way.
Text speak will soon be an artifact of the 90s and 00s owing to predict-a-text smartphones and, to a lesser extent, voice recognition. I have an android OS phone, and I would have to go out of my way to use antiquated text abbreviations.
wah wah wah I’m being left behind by technology
Heads up, they’re not using textspeak because they’re dumb or to piss you off. They’re using it because it’s a medium which they use to communicate with their other friends who can, bear with me here, understand it too. Sure, it would be great if they would pay more attention to whom they are sending the messages too but life would be great if a lot of things happened more my way. (I had to explain the word scintillate to a 30 year old the other day so this is not a young people problem. It’s an expanded vocabulary problem.)
No it is not easy. I went from a phone with a keyboard to one with T9 only and regretted it. Believe it or not, for me a QWERTY layout is faster and more intuitive than remembering which number key has which letters on it. If I still had my T9 phone, id typ lik ths 2.
Spelling correctly or not, I just don’t get the allure of texting. Yes, I’m older and grew up without all the technology, but what slays me is that texting is a pain. You have to stop what you’re doing, look at the keyboard, type back and then wait. As soon as you go back to what you’re doing, dingding* Lather, rinse, repeat. There was a reason the phone was invented people! It’s a heckuva lot easier to talk on that than type. It’s really a backwards communication in a sense.
My job involves computer work and if I’m working, there are tasks I can perform while on the phone. Either I put the phone on my shoulder or I put it on speakerphone and I’m hands free. Same with driving. I can’t stop and text every five seconds, but I can put the phone on speaker and chat while I continue my trip. And when you’re texting, people seem to expect an immediate response as in a real time conversation, rather than like email, when the expectation is you’ll respond when you see it and have time to respond.
And as an editor, txtspk drvs me crzy.
Texting is useful because of what it isn’t: a conversation. There’s no need for the ingrained etiquette and protocol of a chat. I can just send “get a gallon of milk” an not have to ask “how’s your day” or explain myself further, or even be open to questions or other topics. It’s the impersonal touch that counts. Multiple back-and-forth texts can get inane quickly though.
I don’t understand why people still do this. Since the advent of predictive text - which was, what, 10 years ago? - it takes far longer to type “2moro” than it does to type “tomorrow”, because “2moro” isn’t in the dictionary, and just as long to type “u” as it does to type “you” (at least on my phone, the first option for a single press of 8 is “t”, then “v”, then “u”).
Also, phones automatically insert capital letters where appropriate, so why do so many messages come in all lower case? It seems like people are taking more time over composing their messages in an attempt to look less formal.
No! That’s the whole point! With a text, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing and respond now, you can just mentally note: “Oh, I’ve got a text, I’ll deal with that when I have a moment.” If somebody rings you, you do have to stop what you’re doing and talk to them, and probably much of the conversation will be pointless. Texts are the perfect modern method of communication, for me. You don’t have conversations with them, you just ask for information and receive it back when convenient.
Samuel Johnson would like a word with you.
Yeah, I don’t answer messages written in less than complete sentences. I’m stuck with T9 so if I can do it, the rest of you iPhone carrying bastards can do it too.
and to drastic_quench as well…
Really? Cause the few people I text with use it as a conversational tool. What you’re saying makes sense and I could see the use in that. Almost like leaving a sticky note on someone’s desk. But my business partner (who is old like me, so I understand her) and both of my daughters, who are obviously younger, definitely use it as a substitute conversational tool. They text, I text back, they text again a few seconds later… you get the picture. It’s a total pain to have to keep going back to the phone and I’d just as soon talk to them. I know my younger daughter does it because she’s texting from class, so her need for silence is clear. And in that sense, if I really need something from her before she gets out of school, I can and do “drop her a note”. But it just doesn’t seem to always work like that.
It can be both. At the same time, even. I’ve used it as a conversational tool where we’ll send each other 50 messages in an hour. But when I have to do other stuff, like sleep, the other person gets it. No one is around 24/7.
I don’t think everyone has predictive text, or knows that it can be turned on. Actually, I have it, but it annoys me so I turn it off. I’d rather just use QWERTY.
Isn’t the main reason for “text speak” that you only have 150 characters? That’s what I thought.
Some phones do have character limits, like my girlfriend’s older Blackberry. If she sends me a longer text, she has to break it up into 2 or 3 different messages. I don’t mind because on my iPhone the text display screen makes the multiple messages easy, and basically continuous, to view. The weird thing is that if I send her a longer text (a message that would be multiples from her device) from my phone she gets it as one message. There’s a conspiracy in there somewhere!