Greetings my dear companions (and my not so dear ones too)
In an age of spellcheck, Twitter-Wit and this abundance of enlightenment (or some vague notion that we are better off than our predecessors) I find it tragic that we still are plagued with a certain issues. This is my pep-talk for this year in a bid for my contemporaries to "up their game" (and their grammar).
It is NOT 2007 anymore. We all have QWERTY keyboards on our phones- spellcheck and predictive text are a free and active feature (I actually used the latter twice in the last sentence). And I'm not pointing fingers at the people who say "U" as opposed to "you", I understand the purpose of that fully. Instead it's "yew peeples wu aRe d01nG diż tôö meeee" (translation: you people who are doing this to me)
Typing that made my eyes burn. Reading it makes them bleed.
Why?
That's all I ask you. It takes you twice as long to type with letters that have dots, accents and hearts and most rational people have NO clue what you mean. A yew is a tree, it's also the same length as the word you. I would like to show you a yew, with my ewe grazing beneath it. There is no need to personalise English.
Why must you butcher this language that I love so very much? This attempt to be cool and "modern" has left much to be desired. You bludgeon the grammar and starve your vocabulary until all that you express are monosyllables. Furthermore you choose to spread this moronic use of English to other people via social media and your social interaction with us. This leaves me discombobulated and my eyes glaze over with sadness. This spoken and written word fills my soul with euphoria and I feel my heart become engorged with the prose of those who understood it's beauty. How do you begin to detail the spectrum of your sentiments and how can you justly express it without these words? When did stupidity become trendy?
Can we fix this? I'm pretty sure I can hear the 2008 Obama campaign saying, "Yes, we can!" to this query. Read a book, a blog(this one is pretty nice, I think), a magazine or even… (Dare I say it?) A newspaper. We all make mistakes, you're meant to learn from your mistakes. When I was 14 and new on Facebook with a phone that had an alphanumeric keyboard, I used to shorten words occasionally in my wall posts to get the message across faster. I didn't bastardise the language with alternate spelling, "you= u" when I was in a hurry.Now I am 18, older and wiser. Many of my peers have not grown this way.
You don't have to be the next Jane Austen but at least write in a manner that people understand. Its not cute or quirky so whoever told you that texting like you've been lobotomised was adorable, they lied.Don't sabotage yourself by creating an impression of being a total moron.
Intelligence is the ultimate allure. End of story.
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