DSXchange

I am living in a non-english country and it is already a special challenge to understand the normal anglo-american English. Since some time I see that a lot of new comming posters switch intentionally into a childish and infantil English like:
"u" instead of "you"
"2" instead of "to"
"4" instead of "for"
"r" instead of "are"
"as" instead of "has"
"has" instead of "as"
"n8" instead of "night"
"r8" instead of "right"

This makes it much more difficult for me to decode and understand. Can't we all write in an adult manner?

Kind regards
Wolfgang

Wolfgang,

this is a private "pet peeve" of mine as well. Posters should be ashamed of flaunting their inability to communicate by using such contractions! Unless you are posting from your cellular phone you will most likely have a full keyboard at your disposal and there is absolutely no reason to use any shorthand; we work in the computer industry which is already full of cryptic abbreviations that are difficult to understand and we don't need to make matters worse.

I can deal with incorrect grammar, punctuation and vocabulary - both Wolfgang and I as well as a large proportion of posters are not native speakers and understand the difficulties involved in trying to make something technical intelligible in a foreign tongue. And spelling misteaks <sic> are no problem either; I usually hit <enter> on my posts too fast and notice all my spelling errors and missed letters too late, anyway.

But especially for those whose mother tongue is not English it is important to use what little we have correctly. Would you put "I wrkd 4 xyz corp @ Boston b4 applying 4 this job." on a job application? What would your English teacher think if he/she saw something like that. I know mine would have flayed me alive! The same applies to writing posts ALL IN UPPERCASE - anyone old enough to have worked on uppercase-only systems (I belong to that group) should also be old enough to realize how difficult it was to read; anyone younger than that should know that this is today's equivalent of shouting in a post {even the comics use uppercase and bold print to depict that}!

Private, phooey - it should be a public pet peeve!

While that kind of crap is "fine" for text messaging your Milkbar droogies, please leave it there. It has no place in any sort of professional environment - especially one where English may not be the native tongue of a great many of the participants.

Craig,

r u txtng abt my gud frnds @ the "Korova" Milk Bar?

Anthony Burgess came up with almost a completely new language and slang language for his book, based mainly on Russian words inducted into English; so your comment fits in perfectly with this subject. I used to call my friends "droogs", I'd still do that if I had any left.

Horrorshow!

One can but wonder what their system documentation looks like.
No, I'm not kidding. Documentation.

So,
What would you all concider a fitting response to such posters?
(Yes Craig I'll post a Poll here on the options)

Busy times hardly any time to be here .

ill-itr8 ru12?

Ray - I bet you do British crossword puzzles, too...
Roy - at present I tend to put questions by posters who use more abbreviations than real words at the back of my list and usually don't respond. Of course others more knowledgeable than I do end up answering, but I don't like people treating any language in such a cavalier fashion

As I recall this was already addressed once, by Ray I think.
This is actualy some kind of abreviations found in chat rooms.
I agree it has no business here.

I'm one of the CAPS only set like Arnd. My hand writing and spelling are atrotious (I knew I should have paid attention at school to english). People are suprised at how bad my spelling is considering my reading habit. At the moment I'm blaming spelling mistakes on my new keyboard ... It's USB connected and so slow it get's my password wrong 1/2 the time ... just because I can do the 8 characters in under 1.5 seconds is no excuse.

I don't even understand the messages in chat speik let alone some of the spam SMS I get. Here I think it is rediculous. One board I subscribe to simply deletes posts with a message back to the poster if there are too many chat abbreviations.

I'm supposedly a native Australian/English speaker (not British/English, and definetly not American/English ). I've been in computing way too long (and still loving it) and I have trouble with the new kids. Rays comment on documentation is very accurate.