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Language Snobber on TB

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#41
Typing in "leetspeak" or otherwise mangling the language of discourse prevents your thoughts from being clearly understood by others. On a forum, your words are all that you have to convey what you're asking or saying. While smileys may be used to signify humorous intent, there is no adequate way to convey the nuances of non-verbal factors of communication. While I can decipher leetspeak and phonetic spellings, it's a pain to do so, and will create a perception on my side of the communication that the original poster is lazy or for lack of a better term, "communicationally challenged".

Approaching one of your comments about the savings of time mathematically - you say you can touch-type at about 60 words per minute. That's great. "Word" in the typing class I had during eighth grade in 1986 was defined as five letters. Following that logic, typing "u" instead of "you" is a savings of two letters. If 1 word = 5 letters, and you type 60 words/minute, then you're typing 300 letters/minute, so you save 2/300 of a minute, or approximately .4 seconds. That's not really that significant, and the scant time savings isn't really worth the negative impact that the perception of your words will receive in the eyes of many others.

The occasional spelling error I can tolerate far more than the laziness of "txtspeak". I don't expect everyone to spell perfectly, but at least come close, and, as others have mentioned, there's dictionary.com as a free resource.

If people would type, read, edit, then post things would be much easier. I don't claim to have perfect grammar or spelling, but I make the effort. Allowing yourself to fall into habits of typing what some can perceive as unintelligible combinations of ASCII characters will not serve you well if you ever have to type something in a professional environment.
 
#42
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#48
mjolnir said:
Why not do that with the language we speak and write every day of our lives as well?


EDIT: That said, 1 TH1NK U 5H00D TR\' 4ND L34RN L33T 5P34K, M4\'83 TH4T'll \/\/0RK 0UT 83TT3R 4 U. :D
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that was my point, i very rarely use 100% correct english everyday, so why have to addapt for somthing social like tb.
 
#49
Alright, here's my point of view regarding the topic. I have tried using "u", "wat", and other chatspeak words to quicken up my typing, but to be honest, the amount of time it shaves off is so miniscule that it's not even worth it. If you really don't have time to spend an extra half second (literally) to type out what you have to say in proper english, then you probably don't have time to say what you want to say, and should wait until you do have time.

Furthermore, I can completely understand the use of this language if you are text messaging on a phone (without a keyboard- I still use proper english when I'm texting because my phone has a keyboard), and you have to hit every button up to 3 times just to get the letter you want. This being said, I'm going to assume this is not the case and that your keyboard is not just a numpad.

As for grammer, I don't have a problem with things such as saying for example "who do you work for" as opposed to "for whom do you work". I'm just saying that it's rediculous to say "u" instead of "you" to save precious time, especially if you are capable of typing 60 words per minute.
 
#50
namraj said:
that was my point, i very rarely use 100% correct english everyday, so why have to addapt for somthing social like tb.
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With all due respect, you misunderstood me. I do not mean to adapt the language to yourself, but to adapt yourself to the language. You don't just gloss over it and ignore it when you hit a wrong note on your bass, do you? Same concept.
 
#51
namraj said:
that was my point, i very rarely use 100% correct english everyday, so why have to addapt for somthing social like tb.
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I think the general point is not for 100% correct (though it would be nice), but to at least type something that is able to be read by the average person so there can be an attempt at reasonable discourse. I've seen folks for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language do a much better job of expressing their thoughts in a manner that's able to be understood than those for whom English is supposedly their first language but instead use "txtspeak" or "l33tspeak"

I'm almost tempted to let my rabbit hop around on my keyboard and see how close it comes to l33tspeak or txtspeak. :hiding:
 
#53
Bruce Lindfield said:
3 pages already and nobody has agreed with the OP yet!! :p
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clearly I'm wrong then, i knew this would be the reaction when i decided to make the thread.

and if you have noticed very few of my responses are unintellegable and none in text speak. i use a few shortend words because thats how I comunicate useing the typed word as I am used to IM software, where btw people don't have a problem understanding me, and that is largely instantious responses so no editing or thought goes into them.

what iritates me most is when someone picks someone up on their language because they don't agree with the sentiment of the point made.
 
#54
namraj said:
that was my point, i very rarely use 100% correct english everyday, so why have to addapt for somthing social like tb.
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There is a force at work here, and its intention is to hold people back, and keep people uneducated, and docile. I fear that you as well as most young people are falling victim to this. If you think language is evolving.....stop. This isn't evolution. This is newspeak and it is insidious. This is designed to make you more productive. When you spend all your time being productive you loose your concern for how we are being screwed over in reality.

If you think you are being robbed of time by having to speak or type properly, then that just flabbergasts me, but I guess I'm in the minority there because I do not own a cell phone, and choose face to face conversation over frantic texting. I'm not in such a hurry? Why should I be? To be more productive? If so, for whom? The man? eff him. They don't want you to slow down, but like I said....Eff them

The dumbing down of language (any language) will inevitably lead to the enslavement of society. I have no proof of that, but if a fellow like George Orwell thinks it possible, then I feel obligated to believe him. Please read 1984 (as I mentioned in a previous post).
 
#55
namraj said:
clearly I'm wrong then, i knew this would be the reaction when i decided to make the thread.

and if you have noticed very few of my responses are unintellegable and none in text speak. i use a few shortend words because thats how I comunicate useing the typed word as I am used to IM software, where btw people don't have a problem understanding me, and that is largely instantious responses so no editing or thought goes into them.

what iritates me most is when someone picks someone up on their language because they don't agree with the sentiment of the point made.
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I've used IM software in the past quite a bit, and it is a negligible difference between shortening words that aren't contractions and actually typing them out. Your point about people calling out the language because they don't agree with the sentiment may have some validity, but if it's a point worth arguing, then it's a point worth expressing with something at least approaching a coherent form of the language used for the discourse.
 
#56
namraj said:
...3. spelling, if i don't know how it is spelled, i spell it phonetically, if you can't read a phonetic spelling then please learn to talk...
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Understandable. But the way I see it is: if you can't type out something correctly, then please learn to spell.

Jazz Ad said:
My point is pretty simple regarding this topic.
If you can't take the time to write a question in proper English, I don't have the time to answer it.
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Huge +1.
 
#59
namraj said:
1. evolution of the english language; you might not like it but its happening more and more I am seeing posters (particularly aimed and young people (who are of course the future)) using txt messaging slang, and shortening of words, it's going to become more and more comon use so get used to it
2. ease of entering, I type at about 60 words per minute maybe even alittle faster, when typing at that speed the time saved by writing u rather than you is achully significant
3. spelling, if i don't know how it is spelled, i spell it phonetically, if you can't read a phonetic spelling then please learn to talk, as you written english is clearly vastly superior to your spoken english.
4. snobbery, why pick up on something that you clearly understand but just don't like the way its written, we're all different, and we all have different manorisms and colloquialisms embrace people for who they are, including they're typed language, even if it is very comon or even Dawg speak.
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1. Evolution-maybe. I agree with the overall decline. I would prefer to leave the text speak in the text messages. I use text speak when i'm trying to keep a message under the 80 character or whatever limit....in a text message.

2. I type 80 WPM w/a 98% accuracy rating. I was tested on this for a job. It takes a remarkably small amount of time to actually type out the extra few letters, yet it adds quite a bit of readability. Typing 60WPM is great. Keep at it, if you want to be able to type accurately for a potential job, get used to typing out actual words and it will only help you. Leave text speak for texts.

3. Maybe it's just my browser [thank you firefox], but I get spell check in the window. If i can't get the word close enough to where it recognizes the word-i use a different word. The phonetic spelling may sound like the word when you say it, but does it really take that long to install a spell check extension for you browser?

Something that I do that may drive some people crazy is the capitalization errors i make. I don't always capitalize some proper nouns in the middle of a sentence unless if it is a name of a person. So english instead of English [unless if the person is English], i instead of I-small stuff. I could improve all of that with very little effort.

Most of all relax man-this is a message board, it's all about communication. There's a wide age range on the board-some of the guys are old enough to be our grandparents, yet there are many younger than us [I didn't check your age, but the point stands]. Not everyone knows every text speak word-when i saw gd, i had to think if it ment good or God.
 
#60
It's the communicator's job to make sure others understand their communication. I doubt anyone on here cares enough to try to decipher txtspeak.

I agree that how one presents themselves is how they are perceived. So take care of how you present yourself, you are sending a message.

Language exists only to communicate. And language is made up of agreements. We agree that a certain word means a certain thing. We agree that a certain animal is called an elephant. Thus when you say "elephant" I know what you're talking about.

If someone comes in and says "hey, I saw an asdfjkl," well there are no agreements about that word so we don't know what you're talking about. Now the communication is lost. So when someone writes some txtspeak that others don't know about, well we actually stop reading. At least I do. I don't think that person is dumb, I think they just don't know how to communicate, and take responsibility for their communication.

As a writer, I know that if I don't get my point across, I've failed in my task. It's MY job to write things in a way others will understand. And unfortunately we write to the 5th grade reading level because sadly that is where most of America is.

Leave the txtspeak on your cellphones. You're not limited to a certain number or characters here nor do you have to press the same key 3 times to get the right letter.
 
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