Does the short hand and garbled spelling and grammar of some users hurt the Yahoo! community?

Question

We've all seen it. Short hand, text message style typing, used to ask and answer questions. Does this degrade the English language? Is it just the evolution of the written word? Is it simply just a bunch of people trying to "be cool". And most important I'd like to know if it helps or hurts the overall Yahoo! community.

Answer 1

Well I for one can't understand people when they use text message language. There's only a handful of shorthand that I understand. It doesn't take any longer to type out the whole word anyways. I wouldn't say it's the evolution, more like the de-evoltion. Like that movie where they go into the future and everyones lazy and moronic. And it does hurt the community...for me at least...

Answer 2

If I could answer this question in Old or Middle English I am confident most might have trouble reading it.

The change whilst offensive to me is merely a development of written language.  The adoption by the masses is required for the language to evolve, otherwise it remains a subset with no more or less validity than 'Business Speak' or slang.

Occasionally I adopt some of the terminology to reduce the haughty weight of what I want the reader to understand.  Assuming the Questioner is what they say, I will try to meet at their level so my reply is not treated as too 'cobwebby' ;]  I don't do it to be cool, I do it to communicate.

Answer 3

I think it does.  Some of these people have real problems and could probably benefit from the advice of disinterested people, but their written communication skills are so poor they cannot write even a simple sentence.

This is a sad commentary about what is happening in the schools today.  I cannot imagine any teacher allowing students to pass any class without a proper foundation in the English language.

The worst part is that it is so commonplace that by default, the majority of young people have accepted these inaccuracies as being OK, and get ruffled when you point them out.

Some of the ones that make me grind my teeth:

too-to-two

there-their-they're

probably (spelled prolly or probly)

I could see the handwriting on the wall, when people started saying "real" when it should be "really". (This ice cream tastes "real" good.)

Then, even Madison Avenue got involved and started using "real" in their ads on TV.  What absolute rubbish.

And the text-message style of writing?  Plain lazy, in the Y/A format.

I personally feel that our language is being denigrated on a daily basis.

However, people probably felt like that when encyclopedia was spelled, "encyclopoedia",  fetus was spelled, "foetus" and subpena was spelled, "subpoena".

We must draw the line somewhere. Mis-communication can have disastrous results. (i.e. "Raise the barn." "Raze the barn.")

Answer 4

i think its a shame. people use these short cuts so much they forget how to use the proper language.

when schools started letting kids use calculators , they forgot how to do math in their heads. when they came up with digital clocks , they forgot how to tell time on a real one. Velcro has kids not knowing how to tie shoes and now they are going to forget how to write.

of course this is an exaggeration and does not apply to everyone. but there are those out there that it does apply to.

Answer 5

I think it's a bunch of kids (and some adults) just being lazy.  It takes no more time to type a word out.  these are also questions I won't answer.  I won't take the time to decipher text chat to even read the message.