Txt tlk - a modern plague?

Pop into any internet chatroom or forum these days and you'll see it. It can surface anywhere, from a lazy chat about music to a serious discussion about freedom of religious expression - and no matter where it appears, it inevitably p*sses someone off.

Text talk, the bane of modern society.

When sending a message from a mobile phone it makes sense to abbreviate things - that way you get better value for money, squeezing more into each message, and it also doesn't take as long. However, when you have an entire keyboard at your disposal, it's just plain lazy to use text talk.

Not to mention the fact that it can, in large doses, render a sentence incredibly difficult to read. Many a reader has had to pause whilst skimming through a forum discussion to decipher what some lazy so-and-so has written. Honestly, is it so difficult to write out 'thanks' rather than 'thanx' or even 'thnx'? The word 'your' isn't exactly taxing, it's monosyllabic, yet still people insist on typing 'ur'. It's enough to drive a person insane.

Is it their fault entirely though? After all, at school we're all taught about the 'three R's' - reading, writing and arithmetic, so is it any wonder that some poor souls end up forever confused? Perhaps it can be blamed on schooling, although those who make full use of all the letters on their keyboard, and who know that punctuation helps to make things legible (rather than it being an optional extra) would surely disagree. Shall we blame the mobile telephone companies? No, people have been using abbreviations since time out of mind, although we should certainly bear in mind the effect that their advertising has on impressionable people.

Let's place the blame where it really belongs, on those who are just too damn lazy to type a few extra letters. It's not big, it's not clever, and if you have any brains whatsoever you'd give up the puerile affectation and spell like a mature adult.

Is tht clr enuff 4 u?

04/03/2004 ©