::: raises hand politely :::
Um, me? 
Actually, spelling, grammar vocabulary are one of the leading indicators of intelligence. Just pointing that out.
Look, I don’t really care what you do. But in a (nominally) adult-oriented message board I think it’s only to be expected that appearances of juvenile shorthand (Prince, again, notwithstanding) will be met with strong resistance in an attempt to avoid bringing this board to the level of most of the crap out there on the net.
And, if you think you’re communicating…I have no damn idea what ‘SUTA’ stands for? Should I?
Ugh, ugh, ugh
Count me in as one of the people who have the proverbial rage of a thousand suns when it comes to spelling ‘you’ as ‘u’. Ugh, Ugh, Uggggh. It’s sloppy and as, more than one person has said fucking annoying . Words cannot express how annoying I find it. I loathe and despise the use of ‘U’ for ‘you’. The justification always seems to be , “I’m lazy” as if that was something to be proud of :rolleyes: Just how fucking lazy to you have to be to not want to type two fucking extra letters!
Ooooh! Ooooh! I had to type two extra letters! Woe is me! I’m so exhausted!
Diddums!
Either type properly or don’t fucking post. If I was a Message board administrator I would ban people who didn’t spell words correctly after being corrected (not typos, I’ve done enough of them! but the likes of ‘u’…it makes my flesh crawl).
Yeah, I know that ‘u’ means ‘you’. That’s not the point. The point is, it’s annoying as hell and it makes you look like a moron. Yes, people can do it if they like, you can also run around naked in public if you like. But if you persist in typing a perfectly good letter of the alphabet instead of a perfectly good English word don’t bloody complain if other people think you are an illiterate twat, just as if you run around naked in public don’t complain if you get arrrested. pah.
This post was brought to you by the word ‘fucking’ and any fucking letter that fucking isn’t fucking ‘U’.
do you think I should have used ‘fucking’ a few more times there? hm
Abbreviations do not make for good communication, period. I have been lurking on these boards for well over a year now, but it still took a long time for me to work out such oft-used abbreviations as IANAL, YMMV and WRT mean. In fact I still have no idea what several of the abbreviations in Fish’s post are. Having to ask for explanations of such abbreviations makes them redundant and a waste of everybody involved’s time.
“But ‘u’ is just shorthand for ‘you’. It should be obvious what it means”, you whine. I call bullshit on that. I tend to speed-read a lot of posts, particularly by posters I don’t care for and it is much, much easier to read in full English. Even little abbreviations like U, B, 2, 4 cause stumbling blocks and mean I have to re-read sentences. More usually, I’ll just write that poster off as unintelligent or uncaring and ignore the rest of the post.
Then you go on to mention ‘ur’. This is one of the biggest problems in abbreviation reading. It gives no clue as to whether the poster intended ‘your’ or ‘you are’ and makes initial comprehension tougher. You claim that you are communicating well, but if I have to re-read what you have written to define what your intent was then you have failed in your communication.
If you want the majority of Dopers to read your posts and not dismiss you as the pre-pubescent dimwit such abbreviations make you look like, then you should start caring about what you write and take the extra fraction of a second to type the full word.
FTR, I’m not really that pissed off, but I just went back read the entire thread that the OP posted. I must say that it did disappoint me at the amount of hi-jacking that went on in that thread. I know this is the pit, but damn.
There is a girl that I work with that is highly intelligent. She came here from India maybe 7 years ago. Graduated from college over there, and is continuing further education here. I have spoke with her on many occasions. She is very smart, speaks English well, does her job well, etc… She recently sent me an email:
hi
i was trying to reach u ,
i need ur cell ph number
Never did I think she was an idiot, stupid, or anything like that. Maybe it’s because I don’t really have a problem reading words that are shortened, or things like “waht is yuor nmae?”. It’s misspelled, but I certainly understand what it reads. Or maybe because I already know that she knows how to write coherent sentences. So she’s definitely not stupid.
All she was sending me was a shorthand message asking for my cell number. I must have read that sentence in split second and new exactly what it meant. What’s the fucking problem?
Look, this is a society, and like any other society, we have our own mores. You can follow our mores and fit in, or you can deviate from them and suffer the censure of others. What you cannot do is deviate from our mores, and then whine, bitch, and complain about the censure of other community members because, after all, what the fucking hell did you expect? The whining and bitching makes you look like an idiot far more than the stupid abbreviations ever did.
As for your argument that “u” is easier to read, that’s bullshit. My mind automatically recognizes and interprets “you” while I have to actually think about U. It disrupts the flow of reading and is rather a pain in the ass, or PITA if you prefer. Use your abbreviations if you’re so lazy that you must, but don’t pretend you’re doing me any favors when you do so.
I have a shameful confession: We abbreviate “ok” to “k” when we use instant messaging at my office. There is no logical reason for this, but everyone does it. It’s like a disease.
Also, “thx” and “np”. We are polite, as long as we don’t have to type more than three letters.
I probably get shit for that. 
I wholeheartedly agree.
Please add me to the list of uptight pedants who the OP may feel free to ignore in the future.
I agree that there is no reason to use these absurd abbreviations.
Typos, misspellings, or errors in grammar—we all do those. There’s as certain amount of forgiveness, I think, for those kinds of unintentional errors. But when we KNOW someone is doing it deliberately, and they don’t CARE, well, it’s irritating.
I’d personally find it less irritating (and easier to read) when someone misspells something slightly (“definiatly” instead of “definitely”). Because my eye skims over the word pretty much the same way, and it (visually) looks pretty much the same. But “you” and “u” don’t look the same way, and therefore your eye has to stop and process the word. As others have said here, it slows them down and takes longer to read.
We’ve all given really concrete reasons why this sort of usage is unacceptable, and all you do is tell us that “it’s still understandable.” You’re missing the whole damned point. It may be understandable, but it’s annoying, takes longer to read, and we KNOW that the person writing that way is DOING IT DELIBERATELY (not out of oversight or innocent ignorance). They are DOING IT DELIBERATELY because they are lazy or think it looks cute. And they obviously DON’T GIVE A DAMN that the rest of us find it cumbersome to read. So that leaves us with an impression about them. And that’s not going to change, no matter how much you bleat about “but you can still understand them.”
Then you don’t know what ‘irony’ means.
Irony would be the person complaining about using ‘u’ writing their response as ‘u r a idiot, bcuz u spel u “u”.’ (Good lord, that is ugly.)
What IS ironic is the insanely longwinded defenses of the use of ‘u’ as a completely valid timesaver.
Well, this sucks. I’m late to the party, and now others have made all the points I wanted to make. Yes, we can understand “u” instead of “you”, but for many of us it actually interrupts the reading process. Yes, Civil Defense is being a first-rate ass. Yes, the ubiquitous acronyms are annoying and sometimes confusing; I avoid using them. Yes, many of us do have a poor impression of President Bush’s intelligence because of his uneasy relationship with the English language. Yes, my own post is entirely superfluous.
Thank you.
YES CIVIL DEFENSE YOU ARE COMMUNICATING – BUT THE WAY YOU WRITE INFLUENCES THE WAY YOUR MESSAGE IS PERCEIVED IN ADDITION TO THE WORDS YOU CHOOSE. RIGHT NOW, FOR EXAMPLE, I COULD JUST BE BEING EFFICIENT IN NOT HAVING TO USE THE SHIFT KEY WHEN I TYPE. I COULD ALSO BE SHOUTING. MANY READERS MAY INTERPRET IT IN THE LATTER MANNER.
So you can use the shorthand if you want, and people will (for the most part) understand the words you are saying – but they will also make judgments based on the way you expressed what you wrote. As the bromide goes, the medium is the message, and when the medium is txtspk, the message is that you’re either lazy or stupid. If you don’t care, then why are we having this discussion in the first place?
Yes, yes you are. And I am very proud!
Dadgop
Perhaps we could compromise? Say, allow ‘U’ but only if everyone agrees to capitalize properly? Allow any abbreviations in text messages (and IM?) if everyone will type grammatically in formal communication (and email? message boards?)
What do u think? Do U disagree? Do you have any suggestions? <-- Hmm, looking at these I think ‘u’ harder to read for some reason. How about adopting ‘U’ to go with ‘I’?
In the other thread linked in the OP I see this gem
ez is pronounced ee-zed in much of the English speaking world including my corner of it.
Not everybody who reads English pronounces it the same way, that is why these abbreviations are exclusionist.
Interesting story about your friend from India, ParentalAdvisory. I don’t think I’d interpret that as a blow to her intelligence; I’d ask rather who is teaching her this shortspeak, how are they convincing her that it is good communication, and why is she adopting it? I’d guess that some of her peers are failing to set a good example.
I have one more observation to make about the “u” versus “you” thing. Sure, you save a few milliseconds when you create the message, but your message may be on the front page of the forum for days. It will be stuck in the archive for years. Are you really in that much of a hurry to make a lasting bad impression?
Sure, Shade, I can see using txtspk if you’re exchanging messages in a chat room, or over a phone-text service, or using Morse code, because those are perishable, time-sensitive communications. Your messages on this board are committed to record for a shade longer than an alphanumeric pager alert. Hell, why should Shakespeare write out “to be or not to be” when he can write “2 b or not 2 b?” Heck, those few seconds of longhand writing are important, man. :rolleyes:
I don’t much care if people use “u” for “you.” I also don’t much care if people want to wear their underwear on their head. If they want to look stupid, I say, more power to 'em. I can only look better by comparison.
I have deliberately been avoiding bringing up the all-caps analogy for fear of inspiring Civil Defense to deliberately annoy us with those as well.
However, since it’s been brought up by someone else 
, I will point out that I’ve been comparing this entire thread to the use of all caps. Personally, CD, it doesn’t bother me to read anything in all caps. But because I know it’s annoying to most other people I don’t type that way. It’s called being considerate of others!
There is nothing wrong with that. It speaks well of you as a person when you take into consideration the feelings of other people. And contrary to what you keep saying, no one here is so intellectually challenged by the use of a “u” for the word “you” that they don’t know what it means or what you mean by it. You have become the subject of so much ire because you are deliberately annoying people – and you and I and everyone else knows it!
U 2 wouldn’t be rel8ed, wouldya?