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"Text Speak", has been around for a few years now with the introduction of cell phone texting/e-mail. However, as the current generation, my generation, continues it is becoming more and more evident in common society. With grammar taking a backseat to ease, basic sentences cannot go by with half-a-dozen like's, or horrible errors. It annoys me, not to a massive extent, but, is aggravating to say the least, when in a moderately-formal environment, few people have enough care to think about constructing an actual sentence before blurting it out. I guess it's just me being raised in a household where my family was always assaulting my sentence structure...

I understand using "Text Speak" in an environment where you are with friends, and enjoying a good time. Heck, I'm even at fault for it some of the time, but there is a time and place for it, and it's not in a lab with a Professor giving a grammar lesson. Sure, it's easier to text using "u" instead of "you", and it makes things easier, but that, in no way shape or form, should have any outcome on your ability to have an intelligent conversation. How does shortened spelling make itself talking? I do not know, but never-the-less it happens...

Oh well, there's my two cents. As my mom used to tell me. I guess I'm just venting, feel free to post your own thoughts here as well.

This coming from the person who loves ork-moticons...(hypocritical)...

I try to be as close to correct as I can. I can see how text speak works with character restrictions or time restrictions, but outside those it just reeks of lazyness.

I graduated high school in the late 90s and can tell you that even though people weren't quite so enslaved by their computers and phones the grammar was still horrible at times.

The excessive use of "Like" has always been an annoyance to me and it has been around for a long time.

I graduated in the late 80s,and believe me "Dumb=Cool" is nothing new,although it has apparently grown expediently...personally I blame Hip Hop.

Can't stand it myself. I don't think it's a great time saver and makes it deliberately difficult to read. Maybe if you are one of these yoof sorts that can read this garbage it makes sense but as the internet grows more people have to interact with each other, people of all ages and nationalities and many don't use english as a first language. It's incredibly discourteous to use corrupted langauge to communicate making it difficult for others to use. It's like trying to talk with your mouth crammed with food. Don't do it.

I partly been through this before in a post or two.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/315412.page#1905121

FITZZ wrote: I graduated in the late 80s,and believe me "Dumb=Cool" is nothing new,although it has apparently grown expediently...personally I blame Hip Hop.

I blame horror movies.

Also @ OP: U m4d? U jelly? My speech b ok, amiright? Haters gonna hate, ect ect

Ahtman wrote:

FITZZ wrote: I graduated in the late 80s,and believe me "Dumb=Cool" is nothing new,although it has apparently grown expediently...personally I blame Hip Hop.

I blame horror movies.

Also @ OP: U m4d? U jelly? My speech b ok, amiright? Haters gonna hate, ect ect

Touche.

Meh. It's nothing new. Every generation comes up with it's own slang as teenagers. Once they get older and get real jobs, it tends to go away.

The proper rules for language evolve as well. There's all sorts of things that were once "proper" English that are no longer used.

Onlesse thou hath præference we revert to ðe Anglish of ald.

(Apologies to anyone who can speak Old English better than I can.)

Modern varlets, everyone knows a proper capital S resembles an F more than the foul character seen today!

I can only type or text like this. Hence why I tell people call me. Don't text me. Or the fact that I hate cell phones, and I have never gotten use to the idea of text speak. I do l33t speak. But only when I am super lazy.
I also seem to be distracted by cannerus avatar.

I dōn nāht ācnāwan hwā eal se nīðweorc ābūtan. Riht gǣtens wist gǣtens.

Ahtman wrote:I dōn nāht ācnāwan hwā eal se nīðweorc ābūtan. Riht gǣtens wist gǣtens.

l33t? Because I can only say like 3 things and I am counting lol, rofl, and brb

Text speech itself is not a new thing.

We were using it on one line of text at a time chat bulletin boards in the 80s. You had to type quickly and get your point across before the comment you agreed with or were rebutting scrolled off the screen.

There was a need for it then. This is where most of the common "chat speak" phrases came from (and is the origin of the 'leet speek' meme). As it was generally the more 'elite' users who could and did control the direction of posting. 'leets and d00ds were the 'cyber'-peers you looked up to (or slagged off). Sysops had egos more like SARK (Tron) than a modern IT geek.

Along came cellphones and short-message-system. At first restricted to 160 characters (which is still a huge improvement over many of the boards I logged onto in the 80s. - equivalent to TWO whole lines of text (80 column screen) so there was still a need for it there.

Bang! WWW. Pictures and stuff. Message boards where you could take your time with your post. Include pictures (yay, no more ASCII art) and even edit/spellcheck it before sending it and committing it to virtual life.

As I see it, with the prevalence of cellphones, email on cellphones and video-calling, there should be precious little NEED of it still continuing. Even when I WAS restricted to 160 char text messages, I just chose my words more carefully to get the point across.

Don't blame me, I text in paragraphs.

I tended to use predictive text, so always used the full words, and now I have a phone with a Qwerty keyboard, the habit hasn't died. My problem is I'm ridiculously verbose and often run up against the 160 character limit. Luckily, any in-network phones automatically compensate for that by combining up to 10 messages into one if need be, and (aside from Facebook/Twitter) everyone I text is in network.

I never really use true leet speak online, or when texting for that matter. I agree with chromedog that there isn't really much need for it. Of course, my grammar on the internet is not perfect, but whatever. At least I come across as at least semi intelligent. And that's the thing, when you type with terrible spelling online, as many people on Facebook seem to do, you don't seem very smart. There's been people that I've seen online, who came across as idiots with their horrible spelling and grammar. I assumed it was just because they were on the internet and weren't worried much about those things, but when you can barely understand them....it doesn't work for me.