Clear English
Ok, This is going to be a bit of a rant.
I assume that most people who read this blog work in the I.T. (Information Technology) industry and I.T. more so than any industry has its share of buzz words and acronyms. This is an accepted part of any industry or company you work in but it does end up producing a closed culture where by an outsider feels like they are intruding and now to there seems to be this incessant need to really confuse matters by using 'txt' like speak where ever possible.
This needs to STOP.
A good friend of mine demonstrated that on her phone it takes 8 key presses to spell 'later'. It also takes 8 key presses to type 'l8r' yet 'later' is the easier to read of the two.
These days it is too easy for people to slip into and hide behind technical speak for the industry that you are in but to complicate it further by wrapping 'txt' speak around it is, in my opinion, inexcusable.
I have been told that 'txt' speak is the next step in the evolution of the English language. Now, I agree that a language evolves. It has to evolve to keep pace with technological and scientific development but 'txt' speak as the next step in our language? No thank you. I am just waiting for the first computer manual or technical article to use 'txt' speak.
From here on I shall do my best to refrain from over burdening the reader with huge amounts of jargon. Where jargon is necessary I'll add in an explanation. If I forget or miss I expect the readers to call me on it!
I assume that most people who read this blog work in the I.T. (Information Technology) industry and I.T. more so than any industry has its share of buzz words and acronyms. This is an accepted part of any industry or company you work in but it does end up producing a closed culture where by an outsider feels like they are intruding and now to there seems to be this incessant need to really confuse matters by using 'txt' like speak where ever possible.
This needs to STOP.
A good friend of mine demonstrated that on her phone it takes 8 key presses to spell 'later'. It also takes 8 key presses to type 'l8r' yet 'later' is the easier to read of the two.
These days it is too easy for people to slip into and hide behind technical speak for the industry that you are in but to complicate it further by wrapping 'txt' speak around it is, in my opinion, inexcusable.
I have been told that 'txt' speak is the next step in the evolution of the English language. Now, I agree that a language evolves. It has to evolve to keep pace with technological and scientific development but 'txt' speak as the next step in our language? No thank you. I am just waiting for the first computer manual or technical article to use 'txt' speak.
From here on I shall do my best to refrain from over burdening the reader with huge amounts of jargon. Where jargon is necessary I'll add in an explanation. If I forget or miss I expect the readers to call me on it!
posted by Gary Williams at
Monday, October 02, 2006
1 Comments:
Agreed. I never used txt speek on my mobile phone (well, okay, i sometimes shortened words like "you" to "u" and "and" to "&" but only if i ran out of sms space). My mate anna's particularly guilty of this. A typical example an SMS from her is "THORT U WUD LYK IT LOL" which makes me want to throttle her. If i wanted to spell that way i'd move to Sweden.
Conversely, have you seen the way the Guardian changes the word "JPEG" to "JPeg"? How lame is that?
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jph, At
Thursday, October 05, 2006
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