Communication is quite an amazing thing. When speaking face to face to one another, so many little details are hidden away among the words we say. Emotions are the key to a good conversation, and facial expressions and bodily movements make the conversation more than merely words. It has been said before that ninety percent of a conversation has nothing to do with what is being said. Words mean nothing unless acted upon by the person speaking them.
I say all this to preface my topic today. My attention was recently focused on how the majority of teenagers and young adults communicate nowadays, and that would be through texting and messaging as you do on Facebook and Twitter. During my reflection, I realized at how extremely appalled I am with the language and grammar of the majority of the population nowadays. Text language is something that, at its best, is horrid. Never before in my life have I wanted to slap someone in the mouth for something that was not even uttered from their vocal cords until I was assaulted with terrible text language a few years ago. Reading such sentences as "im dng jus fin, how but u?" and "wat bout me? am i not gud nuff?" cause me to want to rip out my eyes and scream for mercy from the travesty that is grammar nowadays. This does not merely apply to text messaging, but to any form of mass communication. Posts that I have seen on Twitter (on TV shows that use this website, I assure you. I do not have an account on there, nor will I ever create one) are just as bad as the majority of texts people send. Posts such as "i seen it happen b4 n it wuz rly stupid" and "i think he dnt no wat was gunna happen" make me clench my teeth and cringe at the mere thought of ever writing like that.
I will admit to using some abbreviations in my texts, however. The only one I use on regularity is bc for because only for the fact that it is such a space saver and the general idea is still recognizable. I do not under any circumstance use "lol" or anything of the sort. I text in plain English, and I am even grammatically correct and use the correct punctuation for words. You will never see a text from me with words such as "isnt", "dont", "im", "cant", "wont", or anything of the sort. I even make a point to use semi colons in my texts if they are needed.
My point in all this is to mourn for the loss of knowledge for grammar by humanity. This may seem like only a problem for those who text or blog or anything, but it is spilling over into educational matters also. I was literally taken aback when I was first informed that an English teacher of mine said he received papers that had text writing in it. Apparently he was not the first to receive such either. I cannot believe the degree to which this careless grammar is spreading and being used. It is bad enough that a good portion of people cannot speak correctly, but now they cannot write correctly either.
I beg all of you out there that read this to heed my warning. Your grammar and vocabulary are a metaphorical muscle. If you do not use both of them with some regularity, they will diminish and eventually you will not even notice this. I pray that there is still hope out there for English and grammar, for it looks quite slim as of late. I can brag and say that my five closest friends refrain from using such atrocious language in their texts and such, and I am certainly glad they do. Please make a habit of doing so yourself if you do not already.
May I just say that I really enjoyed going back through here with Spell check. It was quite the experience seeing all the mistakes it noticed when I was taking on the persona of the terrible texter. I was also disappointed in what it did not correct. Oh, technology.
