Texting – A Shortcut to Disaster

So, you think I’m going to write about texting and driving? No.

How about texting and the way it’s murdering our language? Yep.

May I proceed? K.

To put it bluntly, texting is a lethal injection to the body of our grammar and English.

No longer are sentences required. Today, it’s instant gratification and instant communication.

What, really, is texting doing to our forms of communication? As if email wasn’t bad enough, along comes texting and its hyper-paced diatribe and highly abbreviated language.

Room for interpretation? Absolutely. Room for error in saying what we actually mean? For sure. Now it’s in an even shorter form than email. To watch my teenage daughter text is like watching a John Wayne war movie with a Morse Code machine tapping in the background. Dot. Dot. Dash. Dot. Dot. Dot.

Example: (taken from the archives of two 12-year-olds)    Daughter: Hey
                                                                                    Boy: Hey
                                                                                    Daughter: Watcha doin?
                                                                                    Boy: Nuthin
                                                                                    Daughter: K.
                                                                                    Boy: K.K.
                                                                                    Daughter: LOL
                                                                                    Boy: LMFAO (and not
                                                                                    the band)
                                                                                    Phone hung up by dad.

Texting from a car:                                                        R U Goning to a Moovee?
                                                                                    LMK (let me know)
                                                                                    May jion u?????

We are falling into a dreadful abyss. Just ask the wait staff at a nice restaurant. People are dropping $200 on a meal to “reconnect” their love lives, and they spend 15 minutes texting family, friends and coworkers — and asking the waiter to return later when they can focus more. Ouch!

I am not old-fashioned, nor old-school. I am pro communication that is clear and understandable. So, am I out of touch? Missing the jargon? Not keeping up with the times?

WTF? I guess I am getting old.

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