txt msg

Have you seen the new AT&T cell phone commercial? Where a mother and daughter fight over the cell phone bill using cell phone acronyms? I think it’s horrible. The commercial is extremely pointless and furthermore is quite annoying. Having someone talk using text lingo confused me and made me think. I don’t particularly like having to work to understand commercials. But worse than the commercial are the implications that cell phone lingo has on the English language. Through messaging tools such as cell phone texting, instant messaging, and email, people have begun to adopt shortcuts to the way they write. Although initially harmless, I feel that these shortcuts are needless and have escalated to the point that they make no sense. An example is the commercial. You could turn virtually anything you desired into an acronym, making it impossible to understand what you were trying to say. I text my friends and use instant messaging, and it really isn’t that much of a hassle to type out a few more letters. What’s the point in shortening words such as “Bye”, when they are already so short? Worse, texting is leading to a new age of broken English that stresses getting one’s message out rather than saying it properly and fully. For example, “Hey, go mall”, screams improper English that can only hurt kids when they have to write a thesis paper. Not that I don’t occasionally use such language, but I try to make a conscious effort to limit myself. I don’t see this new fad going away anytime soon, so perhaps I should try to look into what some of the more complex lingo means.