On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 30 March 2011 23:27, Deepa Mohan <[email protected]> wrote: > > After much pain, I've come to the conclusion that this is actually a good > thing. As soon as I see a "u" or a "coz", I know that that mail can be > safely ignored. > > No, I can't agree with you there.... very often, the person is just using a kind of shorthand because s/he (is there no better politically correct personal pronoun?) has not been conditioned to think of it as "wrong" or "lazy". The thoughts expressed are, I believe, what is important....how important is the container, in comparison to the content, is the debate. So...to me, it's difficult to say, "Take the trouble to spell properly", when I myself am pondering on what "proper" spelling is. (Compare spellings in Elizabethan times with spellings now.) When I say it, it comes across as snotty. I am one of those, for example who cannot really bemoan the passing of the "old-fashioned letter-writing". So what if I cannot read your writing, or receive your handwritten letter? I can read your thoughts, and who you are comes through just as clearly in typed text (better, in fact, than through illegible handwriting). Also, I'd rather get a quick email from, say, my daughter, than a one-month-old written letter. I wrote a scenario about two Egyptians clucking over paper and saying it would never have the style and elegance of papyrus... I used to make greeting cards (including fairly complicated pop-up ones!) for all my friends' birthdays and anniversaries but have given it up...instead, I email one of my photographs with a heartfelt message. I don't see that it is different at all. Change WILL happen and it happens, sometimes, in directions we find hard to accept, becacuse we think that our stand-point is the "corrrect" one. So Kunal, I did mean it when I said that this problem was mine, not yours. Deepa.
