I'm a member of a few Internet based forums (all good, clean, decent ones before you ask!) and am becoming increasingly irritated by the number of members who can't be bothered - or don't know better - to use real English instead of text-message derived abbreviations.
Some of my 'favourites' would be;
NE WAY - anyway
SUM1 - someone
CUZ - because
PPL - people
W8 - wait
U - you
The first one is especially fantastic as it's exactly the same number of keystrokes as the word it's supposed to replace!
Even the National Railway Museum has resorted to this bastardisation of the English language in a bid to attract younger visitors. Their new poster uses the text message "Ifu think trAns R ZzZz thnk x2" (If you think trains are boring think again).
It's An Outrage!!
If you're texting on a mobile phone and the number of characters are limited, then fine. If you're being charged by the minute for online access, then fine. But when you're trying to contribute to a sensible, grown up debate or request help with something, and you're doing it from your home PC, there's no excuse.
I've also generally found that ppl (oops, sorry - people) who use these abbreviations are frugal with capitalisation and punctuation, have second-rate spelling ability and are not overly familiar with the most basic points of grammar. Oh yes, and by and large they're aged under 16.
Which makes me wonder not only what schools are teaching, but on what date in the not-too-distant future will the last intelligible conversation take place between those over 25 and those under?
I mean, WTF?? U can LOL M8, but I'm way :(
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