I grew up in an era where there were no personal computers. There were no Instant Messaging programs. There were no cell phones or text messaging. If I wanted to communicate with my friends long-distance as a school-age child and a teen, I wrote letters. With pen and paper. Then the sheets of paper were folded up and put into an envelope. A stamp went onto the envelope, and this whole little package was then walked to the corner mailbox and deposited. Depending on where the letter needed to go, the recipient could expect to receive it in two to four days.
I had pen-pals during those years and I enjoyed the act of putting pen to paper and writing to them. I also sat with a conveniently sized dictionary close by, and if I didn’t know how to spell a word I wanted to use, I looked it up. I paid attention in English class and learned how to use punctuation correctly. It seemed important to me to be able to convey my thoughts in grammatically correct, properly spelled, and appropriately punctuated English.
We’ve come a long way technologically in the last thirty years. People are accessible by their Blackberries and laptops 24/7, and messages travel around the globe in seconds. People talk on their cell phones in their cars, in restaurants, in the check-out line at the grocery store, when they’re walking down the street, and on public transit. There is no such thing anymore as “being out of touch.”
But is it an improvement when kids can no longer write in formal, correct English? I argue that it isn’t an improvement, and I greatly appreciated Mary Kolesnikova’s article, “Why Ur Hed Just Asplode?” If you haven’t already read it, please, my dear friends, take a moment and read this.
That being said, the website ICanHasCheezburger.com is one of my all time favorites. I laugh outloud at the pictures and the bastardized English that comprise the captions. Perhaps the humor in the English-mangled captions, though, comes from that basic appreciation of what the correct words should be. Perhaps it’s not so amusing to kids who are growing up writing this way.
And that’s not so funny.
I wholeheartedly agree. The use of poor spelling, bad punctuation, emoticons and “chat text” abbreviations in written communications has gotten far out of hand. We create strong impressions by what we write – and how we write it. Current trends, using the above, do not speak well regarding the authors, both young and old.
By: Dale on May 16, 2008
at 10:49 am
This is just one more thing that we’re on the same wavelength about, sweetheart. (I put the “sweetheart” on the end because I didn’t want to end the sentence with a preposition!)
By: saintpaulgrrl on May 16, 2008
at 11:58 am
It definitely has an impact. I’m battling my older daughter a little on this. She says JK (just kidding) all the time but claims that’s the only IM-speak she using in vocal conversation. I guess if that’s as far as it goes it’s fine and I should pick more important battles. But I’m keeping a close ear on what she is saying.
I also love ICanHasCheezburger.com but sometimes find myself talking like their captions. Again, this stuff does have an impact even if we don’t mean for it to happen.
By: Bryan on May 17, 2008
at 12:53 am