There is, of course, the deterioration of the English language to
consider here.

Now, I only cringe a little at expressions like "my bad" (which,
curiously enough, really doesn't have a short equivalent in real English
- at least not one I've found), but the use of U and UR for You and
Your/You're, have, I think, contributed to the aforementioned
deterioration.  

I may have recounted a tale of my son, who has a grammatical curmudgeon
as a father, and who attends a school that still cares about proper
grammar, and who, upon seeing the words "Your Incredible" in that liquid
chalk that all the high school seniors use to write "Go Class of 2008"
and other such on each others' cars, said "Your Incredible WHAT?"

I bought him something immediately.  Good boy!

That said, I can certainly see the reason for shrt msgs whn txting:
most people who send text messages do it by typing on a 10-key keypad of
a cell phone.  I'd work to type fewer letters were I so afflicted.  On
the Treo, I think it's not as excusable!

Cheers,
Don


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Craig Froehle
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 4:58 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: txt shorthand in emails (was "Re: [Treo] Using my Treo as a
portable player")

On Nov 23, 2007 6:48 PM,  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> When I'm writing, I have to remind myself to use the shorthand it
> when I'm texting or IM-ing.

If you're at a full-sized keyboard, why would you resort to that?  I'm
not the fastest typist, but it actually slows me down trying to
remember to type "ur" instead of "you're."  In fact, 160 characters is
enough for me to get fully spelled-out messages 90% of the time (I
usually only txt-type when I run out of space in a single message).

I'm sure it's mostly the initial onset of old-fart-itis -- my kids
will likely point out many more examples over the coming years -- but
I thought I'd ask to see if I was the only one.

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