Is Grammar Morphing With Texting?

[mgilmour]

I was watching my daughter text the other day. Both thumbs were jumping over the letters in quick succession until finally she stopped and hit the send button. I asked if she minded showing me what she had written and to be quite honest with you I had no idea what it said. There were a huge number of abbreviations, no commas, no full stops and absolutely no apostrophes.

Is another form of grammar being created by the new generation? If so as writers, should we be paying attention to this and adapting our writing styles to reflect it?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Not unless we're writing something in text speech or the pov of a character who thinks in text speech. It's like any other jargon.

 

[Zoe Mackay]

I don't know, kids these days.

All language use has an effect on the language, but it's a gentle pull on a tidal body, rarely a revolution.

Also... uh... have you really only just noticed txtspk? Which rock have you been living under for the past, oh, fifteen years?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I rarely see it now as people have now been trained to accept that my phone is usually flat. They are sending me emails from their phone.

Which rock have you been living under for the past, oh, 150 years?

Fixed that for you

But I think with full qwerty on many phones rather than purely numeric pad it's slightly in decline. Many of the abbreviations date to Telegraph era (only one button to press!), and then maintained on telegrams.

So nothing new at all. Some Internet speak has become more popular.

 

[mgilmour]

I don't know, kids these days.

All language use has an effect on the language, but it's a gentle pull on a tidal body, rarely a revolution.

Also... uh... have you really only just noticed txtspk? Which rock have you been living under for the past, oh, fifteen years?

LOL! I've noticed it for a long time.....but I was thinking in terms of the impact on language.
If you look back at the richness of the words used in books a couple of hundred years ago compared to today then you could think that there has been a degradation in language. The typical newspaper is aimed at a grade 6 student. I just wonder when we will get to the stage of saying things such as "double good".

 

[mgilmour]

I rarely see it now as people have now been trained to accept that my phone is usually flat. They are sending me emails from their phone.

Fixed that for you

But I think with full qwerty on many phones rather than purely numeric pad it's slightly in decline. Many of the abbreviations date to Telegraph era (only one button to press!), and then maintained on telegrams.

So nothing new at all. Some Internet speak has become more popular.

BTW - I joined your way of fixing things a while back.....if you text me then don't expect an answer. LOL!
I don't think that you're right on this one. The abbreviations and lack of any punctuation at all is really scary. In fact, if you were to ask an average 18 year old about when to use a comma then my guess is they would have a hard time at it.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

if you were to ask an average 18 year old about when to use a comma then my guess is they would have a hard time at it.

I think that's always been true.
After all, 3rd level used to be about 10% of people only
earlier the majority left school at 14

 

[mgilmour]

I think that's always been true.
After all, 3rd level used to be about 10% of people only
earlier the majority left school at 14

I think that one of the interesting things about language is that it's constantly morphing and changing....the challenge for scif/fantasy writers is to keep up with the changes.

 

[tinkerdan]

I just received a text message from the dentist asking to confirm my appointment by sending back the letter C.

I don't feel comfortable having my mouth messed with by the muppets.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I think it will have an impact and yes I am keeping a small eye on it so I understand what my kids are writing.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I don't feel comfortable having my mouth messed with by the muppets.

Swedish Chef and Beaker?
The Bunsen Honeydew guy has no eyes!

 

[hopewrites]

I think that language use has evolved past Communication to Communicate and Conceal. I understand there was a time in the evolution of human communication where getting one's thoughts, feelings, and ideas out of one's own head and into someone else's was the major goal and end result.

Now it is getting one's thoughts, feelings and ideas into only a specific group of person's head(s). More and more I notice cryptography working its way into normal life. I remember when I was just a young whippersnapper and all my friends thought that "pig-latin" was a cool code language. I saw the adults around us roll their eyes and pretend not to understand, and knew that we weren't the first, nor would we be the last.

I did spend all night sitting up writing out a code alphabet so that I could pass notes to my friends in security. But they had massive holes in their Privacy Policies, and passed the second note back with a scribble across it "what does this say?" *hope rolls her eyes at her first lesson in knowing the other parties Privacy Policy before giving out personal information*

Spoiler: lesson

I translated it and passed it back. Seeing that it was a page long treatise on the charms of a particular young man sitting quite near her (hence the need for a code) she passed him the note to see if he found the reading to his liking.

With more and more keyboard options on phones and tablets, I think we will see proper language use sacrificed less and less often for convenience and more for character count (think tweet/text) or subterfuge reasons (my mom cant read what I'm saying if I say "m337m3@573v3n5 50w3cang379la573rd" instead of "meet me at Steven's so we can get plastered").

The question I ask myself is "Is l33t the fist step to an Applied Cryptography degree?" followed by "I wonder how many colleges will be offering Applied Cryptographics when my son gets there?" but now I'm falling into tangent mode...

 

[mgilmour]

I just received a text message from the dentist asking to confirm my appointment by sending back the letter C.

I don't feel comfortable having my mouth messed with by the muppets.

You've got to be kidding! Sending a letter C means what?

 

[mgilmour]

I did spend all night sitting up writing out a code alphabet so that I could pass notes to my friends in security. But they had massive holes in their Privacy Policies, and passed the second note back with a scribble across it "what does this say?" *hope rolls her eyes at her first lesson in knowing the other parties Privacy Policy before giving out personal information*

Spoiler: lesson

I translated it and passed it back. Seeing that it was a page long treatise on the charms of a particular young man sitting quite near her (hence the need for a code) she passed him the note to see if he found the reading to his liking.

When I was in high school my friends and I taught ourselves dwarven from the back of the Return of the King. The teacher caught us passing notes and had no idea what we wrote! LOL!

 

[hopewrites]

You've got to be kidding! Sending a letter C means what?

C=Confirm.

A lot of subscription texts run on a similar script. Facebook is always texting me Reply 1 to post '[scripted message]'
I had a phone company that messaged me every month when my bill was due Reply PAY and the last 4 digits of a previously saved payment method to pay [X] amount.

 

[mgilmour]

C=Confirm.

A lot of subscription texts run on a similar script. Facebook is always texting me Reply 1 to post '[scripted message]'
I had a phone company that messaged me every month when my bill was due Reply PAY and the last 4 digits of a previously saved payment method to pay [X] amount.

I'll have to remember that one....c=confirm!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Or C = Cancel, O or 0 = OK
Read instructions!

Also why phone keypads
[1] [2] [3]
[4] [5] [6]
[7] [8] [9]
[*] [0] [#]

but calculators
[7] [8] [9]
[4] [5] [6]
[1] [2] [3]
[0] [.] [-/+]

I actually do know the reason.
Look at Alphabet on circular phone dial and you see why phone numeric pad is laid out as it is. Mechanically the circular dial 1 = 1 pulse and 0 = 10 pulses, so HAD to be 1 to 9, 0 order.
Calculator keypads had a different origin.

 

[J Riff]

Sumebudy rote this up, in a comic-strip style, years n years ago, and, in the fuchur, peepl start to tok in txtspk. All sentences short, all spelling simplified, and it turns into a new langwidj.

 

[Christopher Lee]

God, I hope not. The day I can't pick up a new novel without it being written like a modern day text message, will be the day I decide to no longer read books.

Fortunately, I do not believe it will - too many of us snobs out there trying to show off how well we can word a sentence. Lol

 

[Vertigo]

I think it's a passing phase. Pretty soon most computer input will be speech based and so abbreviations, as in text speak(txt spk), will be redundant. To a certain extent it is already happening with modern smart phones having such good predictive text that it's actually quicker to select the full word than to type the text speak abbreviation.

Being relatively new to smart phones and recently having cause to do a lot of texting and being already a computer software person, I was impressed by the apparent learning ability of my android (Samsun Galaxy) predictive text. I was out skiing so skiing terminology featured heavily in the texting I was doing and within a few days my phone had picked up on this and started offering the words it was finding me using most.