Several years ago I worked with a fellow I’ll call Mike. Mike was six or eight years older than I and an upper middle manager type; the sort of fellow who was going to appear on promotion-to-VP candidate lists for a year or two and eventually get there. I didn’t report to him, nor was he in my chain, but he was over the development organization with which I interacted daily.
Mike was a bit awkward socially. He had a good command of English, but he didn’t value conversational niceties at all, so he wasn’t any good at them. (This didn’t make him a very popular guy with several of my colleagues.) But what I noticed about him one on one was that he would frequently and deliberately pause during conversation, and something polite would inevitably follow such a pause. It was like he was spinning up his hard drive to find what he knew he was “supposed to say,” and then he’d say it. I found this endearing, because the spirit I read into it was “I don’t care about this stuff, but I know others do, so I should make an effort.” Sheesh, that’s more sincere than someone who’s just polite by habit, isn’t it?
The one thing that drove me crazy about Mike’s communication was that he wrote all of his email in all lowercase, e.g.: “i’ve been looking at this problem, and i don’t think it’s a showstopper. let’s make sure it’s documented in the readme and let it go.” It made me wish he’d spin up his hard drive for that too.
When it became clear that email was going to be ubiquitous–so, say, 1997 or so–I remember thinking “well, good. At least this new concentration on the written word will promote good grammar and spelling.”
Ha! I’m a little embarrassed that I ever thought such. Not only did that not happen, but now we have things like a texting contest won by a little girl who estimates she sends more than 8,000 text messages a month. That’s about 16 per waking hour, or more than one every 4 minutes. What would you guess her grammar and spelling are like?
More importantly, don’t kids go to school and play outside anymore?
I suppose there may come a day when that obnoxious cyber-shorthand, or whatever the hell the cool kids call it, becomes acceptable in formal English. If so, my children may suffer for it. I’m extremely proud of Nathan’s language development, and Aaron’s coming on strong. But given my vocation and avocation, you might guess that we try diligently to speak English properly around the house, so that’s what the boys are hearing and practicing. Daddy’s not at all hip to this new crap. It’s an assault on meaning, it’s baby out with the bathwater, and I’m not playing.
Of course, the pragmatic side of me realizes that if they need it, they’ll pick it up. I just hope they don’t need it. For it to ever be that important would not say good things about the state of English.
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So wt r u saying?
u r trying 2 b funny lol
I did notice that I was guilty of a “WTF” in a post not long ago. I need to be careful about that.