Friday, January 22, 2010

SMS English in Daily Communication

SMS is short for Short Messaging Service. And yes, I am aware it used to cover as much information you can in 160 characters when you send a message to someone’s mobile phone. My question is: Why use the same kind of English in e-mails and social media (except Twitter, which has text limits)? There is no dearth of space in an e-mail or other forms of communication. Nor do you have to pay an extra buck for it. I am not against using small words when it comes to texting someone, but gets irritating when transferred to other media of communication.

Most people these days have a good control over the keyboard and have a good typing speed. It makes me wonder as to how much longer it will take if one wrote a complete word in regular English than in SMS English. Writing ‘dissertation’ will probably take two seconds longer than writing ‘dissy’! I have come across some formal mails also where people have used disastrous English to communicate through English, which is not even SMS English probably. Some alphabets like ‘g’ go missing at the end of a word for some people. It is absolutely normal for them to write ‘evenin’ or ‘clubbin’, etc. I may come across as old-fashioned when I write this, but I really wished people wrote regular English in e-mails, letters or other social media websites.

Here are some words that I’ve routinely seen that really makes me wish the above.

Sffring – it means ‘suffering’
Anvsry – it means ‘anniversary’
Dissy – it means ‘dissertation’
Sm – it means ‘some’ (This makes me think about the time it takes to write ‘sm’ and to write ‘some’)
Nt – it means ‘not’ (Again makes me think the same thing)
Hv nt – it means ‘have not’ (would be better if this were written on the cell phone, rather than e-mail)
Sumtyms – I know what it means, but again, there’s literally just two more alphabets to type in the original word of ‘sometimes’
Pychas –I think this one takes the cake. Guess what this means! And I’ve read this word written by quite a few people. It means ‘pictures’!!

Maybe people write this type of English to stay with the flow or keep up with the times! In this aspect, I continue to remain old-fashioned or ancient and write in the English I’ve grown up learning!

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