A lot of people use text-speak (i.e., ‘will u b here l8r?’) at least when texting, if not sometimes in other contexts as well. It started as a way to streamline the texting process, but became kind of a style all its own. If you texted in full written English prose to people using txtspk, you might get loled out of the room…
I always used full English myself, and never could get myself to stop hearing text speak in “retard voice” whenever I read it, but recognized this as saying more about me than about anyone using the technique.
Well, now I have a fancy phone, and I see that now there’s this thing called “swype” (or “google keyboard” or “swiftkey” depending on your brand…) that seems to allow for texting in full-on English prose without resorting to text tricks. In fact, it would be actually be harder to use some text-speak terms than it would be to simply “swipe” the English word. For example, “l8r” would require switching between the letter and number keyboards if you wanted to type it out, where as you can just swipe your thumb to the left and right a quick couple of times to get the word in normally spelled English.
So I wonder if text speak is going to go away now, or will be going away. It was born out of a drive for efficiency, and acquired certain cultural significances along the way. The drive for efficiency no longer works to encourage text speak, but will cultural forces keep it around for a generation or two anyway?
My completely unsubstantiated opinion is that with full keyboards and yes, apps like swype, there is far less pressure from an efficiency and economy standpoint to use textspeak, but at the same time, it has developed into a register of its own and I think it will hang around and continue developing as simply another mode of writing.
I may be stupid, but I’ve never understood how text speak was supposed to allow me to operate a cell phone more efficiently. Every phone I’ve ever owned, as far as I can remember, has come with dictionaries and autocomplete functions (well, maybe with the exception of the first one or two, back in the stone age). Writing proper English in full sentences has never seemed to require more effort than using those text speak hieroglyphs - it’s more the other way around. To type like that, I would have to learn a whole new register, somehow find a friend who had the patience to decipher the results, and actually override my phone’s auto-correct functionality. Text speak, as far as I can tell, is just another way for kids to be “rebellious” and assert their independence from old farts like me. But, hey, maybe I’m just not getting it.
On the other hand, I’ve obviously adopted part of the register into my vocabulary, same as everyone else (and hugged it and squeezed it and named it George). I’m even saying WTF and OMG out loud. So, YMMV, I guess.
Sure I have. It still seems easier to just use proper sentences. And trust me, I’m one lazy bastard. If there was some obvious way for text speak to make the process easier for me, I’d be all over that thing.
Yeah, my first few phones didn’t even have T9 capability and punctuating anything more complicated than terminal markers was a pain in the ass. I’m not even sure they were synced to the 1 key.
Swipe’s been around for years, my mom, the Grammar/Spelling Nazi still texts like a 13 year old. IMO text speak is going to be around for a while. Besides, Swipe is still very uncomfortable for a lot of people, especially if you’re not good at typing, you really have to know where the next letter is since your finger is covering most of the keyboard. That’s one of the major downfalls of swipe, IMO.
I love Swype. My first smartphone, the G1, had a physical keyboard, and I thought I would always have a phone with a keyboard, until Swype came out. Now I find a physical keyboard on a phone ridiculous.
I seem to have no predictive ability with trends, but to answer the OP, I think Swype-like functionality should end text-speak. Whether it does or not is up in the air to me.
I’ll tell you what though, if you like Swype, here’s a free plug for SwiftKey, which I use on my Android phone. You have to drink the kool-aid and allow SwiftKey to store a bunch of personal data in the cloud, but once you do, it remembers your typing patterns and automatically builds a personalized, predictive dictionary. I type the first 2 numbers of my address and it pops up the full 4-digits as a suggestion. Once I hit that suggestion, my street pops up as the next suggestion, before I type anything. I hit that, and my street suffix pops up. Same with my email address and various other phrases that I commonly type. That plus Swype means there’s really no reason to ever use text speak.
I think some phrases from text speak will creep into our language and never go away. Heck, I still type “cyaz” like it’s 1995 when signing off.
I always assumed part of the text speak thing is also simply staying under the 140 character limit. Unlimited text plans are more common now, but plenty of people are still paying for them or have a limited number.
SwiftKey is good, but I would still mow down a children’s hospital to get a real, physical keyboard back. I suppose in the meantime while Satan and I work out the details of the contract for my soul, it’s good enough to hold me over, even though it can’t figure out that I’m 1,000,000x more likely to say “drinking” than “diving.”
I don’t use swype, but I hate text speak. If pressing each individual key on the keyboard was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible, it’s good enough for me.
I lean on suggested words and autocapitalization though, but unfortunately autocorrect is wrong more than 50% of the time. And how the hell is pressing the space bar twice supposed to be easier than just typing a period??
Textspeak predates SMS, it was originally used on internet chat programs like IRC and ICQ. These were all written on a desktop keyboard which is still many times faster than swype but were adopted because even keyboard typing speeds are not quite fast enough for real time chat. So while swype may reduce the motivations to use textspeak, the original impetus is still there.