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Showing posts from April, 2011

The Madness that is SMS Language

Very few things get my goat as much as SMS language. This baffling code language consisting of random abbreviations and amputations of decent words has gone too far in my book. Confined to a personal message meant to convey an urgent something, as in "B back a.s.a.p. Pls prep dinner b4 7", it is entirely harmless and may even be practical. But let loose in the formal world of academia, it is an unstoppable plague that threatens the dignity of those who love words simply because they are multi-syllabic and melodious when pronounced. Jokes aside, the popularity of SMS language among sensible teenagers and adults is so widespread that it is now on the verge of sucking standard language use into its black hole of no return. No retrieval possible. As a result, what you see these days is a whole generation of students (and adults) who have no clue what the apostrophe is meant for. They, foreseeably, also cannot tell the difference between "your" and "you&