Prose, Prose, whr4 art thou, Prose?

I find text message and message board “speak” not only difficult to read but incredibly annoying and sad. A whole generation is growing up with the mistaken belief that “How R U?” is grammatically correct and that misspelled words are totally acceptable because a “message board isn’t a spelling test”. Apparently these electronically charged youth are under the odd misconception that what they learn in school is solely for the purpose of passing a test and matriculating from one grade to another until they finally graduate from some form of “higher education”. Proper spelling and grammar isn’t to be misinterpreted as useful or something that “real” people do in everyday life.

If you love the English language and appreciate well written prose and have not yet had the exasperating experience of attempting to read and understand messages posted on a message board, or your cell phone, I will be happy to supply you with the newest form of communication. Here are but a few examples of which I speak.

RU Gng Out 2Nite? (Are you going out tonight?)

IM ABT2 LV NW BHM B4 UNO IT (I’m about to leave now, be home before you know it.)

K CU (Okay, see you.)

This truncated version of language is showing up not only on message boards, but now you can find them sneaking into e-mail, essays, and other, more formal, forms of writing. I am not the first (and hopefully not the last) to be completely aggrieved at the potential for loss of language skills. The BBC carried an intriguing article not long ago about students and the use of “Text Lingo” in schools (makes me shudder to think on it):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2814235.stm


It would seem that this latest evolution is just the next step in the progressive decline of language. Newspapers took a perfectly good language and created Headlines, Hooks, and Captions. Since television’s advent into our lives, the little talking box has grown in size while its use of the language decreases in value. Today we are subject to Graphic Splash, Buzz Words and Sound Bytes. Literature has changed so dramatically that it is hard to believe that today’s best-selling authors have ever read the likes of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Austen, Bronte, Fitzgerald, or any other purveyor of beautiful words and thoughtful prose.

I wonder, has the written word transformed the reader or have the demands of lazy readers and writers transformed the written word? Where do you think they went, all of those lovely lost words and sentences?

As 4 me, I lng 4t dy wen wrds wr wrds n lang wz lang dat I cud read n wrt w/o a transl8R! drivN me %-)