# What's going on cognitively with people who e-communicate like this? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 22, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382 "2009-01-22T01:00:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/41 "2009-01-22T20:07:08Z")
The posters may be the victims of a poor text-guessing program like the one my Sprint phone uses. It can be nearly impossible to refuse the phone’s guess as to what word I am trying to type, and rather than delete and re-type the whole sentence I’ll often let several mistakes stand. Another possibility is the purposeful use of “L33t” which is a dialect in and of itself. It was originally a sort of short-hand, but now I’d compare it more to Cockney rhyming slang; it has become a way of filtering noobs from leets. [Leet - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L33t) Truth be told though, since about Y2K I haven’t seen real web elites using this; it’s more likely to indicate a young’un wishing to appear to be L33t. LOL! It’s also a possibility that the brain is simply working faster than the fingers can type. This is a common cause of poor handwriting as well. The attempt to communicate in stream of consciousness can be defeated by a lack of typing skill. Or, as in my case, the right hand types faster than the left, which produces quite a few bizarre misspellings and capitalization errors. hth! (hope that helps) ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/42 "2009-01-22T20:17:57Z")
If I am sending a quick one-line message to a colleague by e-mail, I don’t tend to bother with capital letters and punctuation, and neither do they. If I’m sending a more important message, or writing to someone outside the company, I write as carefully as I would a letter. ---
**Author:** ![DagNation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@DagNation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DagNation)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/43 "2009-01-22T20:49:23Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > If someone writers THRU or THROUGH or ENUFF or ENOUGH you get the idea, why make a deal out of it? Because you don’t like it? Well the world changed, so you gotta keep up with it. > > 🙂 The more non-standard it gets, the longer it takes (me) to read. I have seen posts in “leet-speak” on message boards defending the “right” to write like that - sure, they can write any way they like, but I read the first paragraph, and skimmed the rest, then eventually just ignored the posts from that person. Communication has a goal: to communicate. If the writer makes it more difficult than it is worth for the reader, the communication stops being effective. There are other factors involved, but bad grammar and spelling make reading things difficult, and so if there is no other compelling reason for me to read, the lazy post is lost on me. I have also seen excessive run-on sentences and 2-page paragraphs with no structure, and I loose interest in those pretty quick too. Part of the reason that these writing conventions evolved was to keep written language clear - ignore them and the writer risks being ignored or misunderstood. There is already a huge risk of misunderstandings in modern electronic text communications anyway, I see no reason to make it worse. Dag ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/44 "2009-01-22T21:05:56Z")
> [@DagNation](#): > > Communication has a goal: to communicate. If the writer makes it more difficult than it is worth for the reader, the communication stops being effective. There are other factors involved, but bad grammar and spelling make reading things difficult, and so if there is no other compelling reason for me to read, the lazy post is lost on me. I have also seen excessive run-on sentences and 2-page paragraphs with no structure, and I **loose** interest in those pretty quick too. > > Part of the reason that these writing conventions evolved was to keep written language clear - ignore them and the writer risks being ignored or misunderstood. There is already a huge risk of misunderstandings in modern electronic text communications anyway, **\<–punctuation** I see no reason to make it worse. Either there is some incredible [irony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudere's_Law) going on here… …or people are embedding these [Easter eggs](http://www.lessontutor.com/eeslose.html) as subtle sarcasm. I’m too dense to figure it out either way. Your “goal of communication” was lost here. _[red text is mine]_ ---
**Author:** ![DagNation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@DagNation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DagNation)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/45 "2009-01-22T21:39:59Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Either there is some incredible [irony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudere's_Law) going on here… > > …or people are embedding these [Easter eggs](http://www.lessontutor.com/eeslose.html) as subtle sarcasm. > > I’m too dense to figure it out either way. Your “goal of communication” was lost here. > > _[red text is mine]_ no intentional irony, I just can’t spell. I would have to go to a dictionary to figure out what is the right spelling for words like that. I think I am doing good to get “their” and “there” correct most of the time. I also have always had trouble with run-on sentences, if that is the problem with the comma. I appreciate the assumption that I was trying to be funny! Thanks. My sarcasm is rarely that subtle. Dag ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/46 "2009-01-22T21:43:26Z")
> [@Freejooky](#): > > I have several business contacts and family members that are otherwise intelligent and computer-literate who throw all grammar, spelling, and basic human communication out the window when it comes to writing e-mails or sending text messages. These are people with PhD’s, people with high-paying jobs, and people that are otherwise (verbally, interpersonally) excellent communicators. > > An average e-mail from one such person could look something like this - > > This sounds like the person is drunk or mentally impaired, but it’s clearly not the case. Am I just seeing a weird informality toward the electronic medium, or is there some sort of cognitive freakout happening here? This question interests me, because I know of _two whole and entire professors of Philosophy_ who write emails like this! I have never understood how this could be. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/47 "2009-01-22T21:58:05Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > .. because I know of _two whole and entire professors of Philosophy_ who write emails like this! … I love this. This, as opposed to, say, incomplete professors, or partial professors, or even fractional professors. heh heh “whole and entire professors.” heh heh ---
**Author:** ![accidentalyuppie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@accidentalyuppie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/accidentalyuppie)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/48 "2009-01-22T22:04:15Z")
> [@ParentalAdvisory](#): > > You can write educated emails without ten dollar words. But you can’t without words. Really ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382/49 "2009-01-22T23:55:36Z")
if its 2 hard, ur 2 old lololol [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-going-on-cognitively-with-people-who-e-communicate-like-this/482382.md?page=2)