In private messages on message boards or if I’m texting with the children, I am not very “formal” as far as capitalization goes. I still try to spell correctly though. Text speak outside of a cellphone irks me to the ends of the earth and back again. I’m a little uptight that way, lol.
Why people do it, I have no idea. Perhaps they’ve realized it irritates you and they’re being “cute” about it by sending you messages that way?
Sure. The medium is the message. I derive meaning from the form of the communication.
When I see something written in that sort of language I form an impression about the sender and the sender’s attitude toward me. This impression could be:
– the sender is an ignoramus who is incapable of composing a more sophisticated message;
– the sender is capable but doesn’t give enough of a shit about me (or what she’s saying) to take the time to compose their message properly;
– the sender is a child;
– there is some technical limitation imposed upon the sender which impairs their ability to type (e.g. a phone keypad.)
I’m not saying it’s right or fair. But if you send me a misspelled, ungrammatical e-mail it tells me something about you. Paragraphs, spelling and punctuation exist to make written language clearer and easier to comprehend. If you can’t be arsed to bother with it that subtly influences my impression of you and your message.
What would you think of a person who YELLED every time they spoke to you? Or constantly mispronounced words? Or spoke in an irritating falsetto voice?
I recognize that internet/text communications are still new and the culture is still developing around them. But the fact that it’s new does not excuse rudeness or make sloppy writing any easier to read.
Yeah, ain’t ignorance grand?
the fact is YOU’RE the wrong person. The language used by computers is a “dialect” of English. Language changes, if it didn’t we’d all be talking like Shakespere.
As long as their meaning comes across it’s OK. It doesn’t mean they are uneducated, it means they are using the new technology to get their message across.
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.
Depends just how much they corrupt their syntax/grammar/spelling. I spend a lot of time reading written communications and I’m naturally somewhat impatient. This means if it is garbled enough then their meaning does not “come across”, because I won’t give it the time of day to try to decipher it.
This doesn’t mean they have grammar skills. I work with a few people that just are not competent writing in the English language. Having a high paying job does not mean that this person is particularly intelligent or book smart. In fact, lately it seems to be quite the opposite. Add in a dose of ‘I don’t care about you’ and a spoonful of ‘the kids do it and it’s cute’ and there you have it, a upper level employee who writes mail like they’re a texting teen.
On some level I also believe that these folks know that their grammar sucks and it’s a challenge for them to compose a clear paragraph so they add in the ‘i’ and ur so that it’s clear that they aren’t trying.
I tend to be a very, very fast reader. Not a true speed reader, but generally I read 2x to 3x faster than I can read aloud. This all comes to a grind halt when people start to not use conventional spellings, grammar, and punctuation. By being lazy and refusing to write in a proper manner, they slow me down.
I write emails & SDMB posts like I’m composing an essay. Here on the SDMB my spell check is manual, so typos are more common than when I write an email. But I spend the time to proof, to clean up grammar, and to re-structure sentences and paragraphs as I re-write beofre sending.
When I write emails, Word is continuously correcting my typos. For example, I type “teh” about 80% of the time & “the” about 20%; it’s just the way my fingers work. Word always fixes it before I see it. The SDMB input box never does. I try to cover for that, but I bet there’ll be a “teh” in here after I hit submit.
So much for email, on to IM …
When I am working and an IM comes in, it is 100% an interruption. It is also intended for one-line Q&A, not extended discourse. It also is viewed (by me at least) as 100% disposable, unike email which is archived forever. I view it as simply a phone call by other means.
So my typical IM response is 100% stream of sentence, just like I’m talking, but with the additional confusion of typos thrown in. And I’m typing absolutely as fast as I can, because the process is meant to be real time and typing is, for me, vastly slower than talking which in turn is barely 1/10th as fast as thinking. I can think up a paragraph in the time my fingers can type the one word “paragraph”.
That causes sentence tense or quantity disagreements, sentences that make a 90 degree turn in the middle and end up someplace that doesn’t match where they started at all, etc.
And when I get to the end of my thought, I hit Enter; I don’t start proofing. And because the IM client doesn’t do any automatic typo fixing, I get to see just how awful my typing has become.
Here are some recent typical samples of my actual IMs. each was sent from a desktop, not a PDA. Each of these is from a different “conversation”. Despite my comment above about IMs being viewed as disposable, our system logs every one for eternity.
Bottom line: I view IMs as disposable verbal conversations translated into text. I view emails as written but portable documents. Very different standards apply to their creation.
I suspect there are a few people who view both IM & email the same way I view just IM. We certainly see newbies here on the SDMB who approach it like a chat room, firing off a string of minimally thought-through one-liners. Regardless of their typing & prooffing skills, that’s evidence of a real-time conversational thought process, not an alternating essayist thought process.
What I cannot understand about the manner of writing in the OP’s example: it’s not only harde to decode, but also harder to encode - at least for someone who would have to change mental gears from writing normal business/engineering etc. prose.
My estimate would be (assuming a normal keyboard and screen, i.e. not a mobile phone)
Effort of mentally composing and writing a note in normal English, spelling and grammar not checked - 100%
Effort of mentally composing and writing a note in normal English, spelling and grammar checked and corrected - 120%
Effort of mentally composing a note in normal English, mentally translating into the OP’s example’s style, writing - >> 200%
Fat fingers, small keyboards, poor spelling, lack of time ( Instant messaging or in a multi-message group VS chat room. ) not a touch typist, mind gets so far ahead of fingers I end up skipping whole paragraphs so I sound demented. etc. forever and ever…
I try do it correctly but also do ‘prolly’ (etc.) for style and speed increase, also have mild dyslexia which does not help. I also leave out a lot of ( I, The, you, etc, that would make my writing clearer because I am trying to keep up with my thinking. ( I do not think fast at all, I just type really slow… )
I’m old and went to Catholic schools for 12 years, what do you expect?
[hijack]For those of you who do this:
if you ever happen to see a book by someone called Enrique Jardiel Poncela, give it a twirl. Absurdist humor (think Spanish movies Belle Epoque, Airbag or ¡Átame!) and lots of playing with typography. Even those books of his which are compilations of radio monologues have typography games.
[/hijack]
My coworkers who do that in some contexts reckon “it’s OK so long as I don’t do it in a professional email.” I don’t get it. I’m part of the “will abbreviate if actually texting or as specific slang within a group” crowd: any misspelling in my emails is a typo.
I once heard someone say that there’s a million different ways you can spell a word - but only one of them is right. Even if your reader can get past your mistake and figure out what it was you meant to say, the fact is that you spelled the word wrong.
If I was constantly having to read those messages from you, LSLGuy, I’d be gritting my teeth every time. In reading those, I have to go back and reread them, some of them a couple of times, to figure out what you are saying. In the back of my head would be the idea that you have decided that your time is to important to bother with spelling correctly, so I can just deal with taking 3-4 times as long to read it.
My thoughts exactly. I don’t care if you occasionally transpose a character or misspell a word. People think faster that they type, and it happens. I can even see how it would be easier on tiny keyboards to abbereviate common words or phrases like thx, lol, etc. It’s annoying and makes you look lazy, but I can see why you would do it in a personal communication. Either of these in a business setting makes you look unprofessional.
But in the OP’s example, the words are not simplified, they are deliberately complicated. You basically have to think about what you want to say, then try to figure out how to get every third word wrong, but still have it sound right phonetically. The sender is a complete idiot, and is wasting both his/her and my time.
Gaudere’s Law strikes again!
I personally think it’s better to write “time is 2 important” to align with postmodern sophistication.
Also, www.google.com is also a misspelling of “googol.” I’m surprised millions of people are actually able to find that URL. I always type “www.googol.com” and end up at some math website. Very annoying.
I, too.
Same here - for a very brief moment while I reached for the delete key.
I make an horrendous amount of mistakes but take the time to at least try and correct them all before sending.
Why this need for extreme speed? A few seconds longer is no going to make any difference but the legibility to the recipient is worth far more than the time “saved”.
In the comment/debate forum in my hometown’s newspaper’s website some posters/debaters talk in gangsta/ebonics. “Kwit wit yo hatin…my tanks fo da real shout out to ma peeps” type thing.
I find it hard to decipher, and I often wonder if the poster is really some nazi skinhead trying to
show ignorance of another race by posing as some sort of “gansta/thug” in some of the heated debates.
I usually write in correct grammar, just because I’m OCD with grammar like that. The only times that I will write in shorthand or with misspelled words is when it’s an inside joke with friends or if I’m trying to get a long message within the 160 word limit. Then I’ll drop things like apostrophes, and make words like through into thru.
Let me take a whack at this. What’s going on is that although there is virtually no right and wrong in language (see all our discussions on prescriptive vs descriptive grammar), there are conventions. Ideally, you want to make the mechanics of reading your prose completely transparent for the reader. Ignoring the conventions of grammar, spelling and punctuation requires your reader to consciously think about the mechanics and figure out meaning. This requirement is an imposition on your reader. You surround your ideas with a barrier of thorns. You inhibit communication. You may be perfectly happy that you have written an idea, but you have made it less likely that the idea will be transmitted efficiently.