Supercalifragalistic-txt-pialidocious

[j4]

"It was so nerve wracking. My hands started to shake. I couldn't get my apostrophe"

[thanks to brrm for the link]

I used to have a phone which didn't have a semicolon. When complaining about this to other people I found that they were generally more sympathetic if I told them I needed it for winking emoticons; actually, though, I just like semicolons. I once got 3 house-points for "good punctuation", and I think that was mostly because of the semicolons. It's all gone to pot now, though. I blame kitteh, though the rot probably started setting in when ox.test represented the cutting edge of timewasting technology. Might it be coffee time now, please?

Comments

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

I sympathize about the semicolon. My texts are always complete sentences with proper punctuation, and I employ the semicolon often.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Nobody ever believes me when I tell them that I use complete sentences in SMS. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Them: "Oh, no, I never use 'texting'; you see, I know how to spell."
Me: "I spell and punctuate properly when I send texts."
Them: "Yeah, right."
Me: "No, really, I do. Look. Here are some texts in my sent-messages folder."
Them: "Anyway, it's all a load of nonsense."
Me: "DUDE U R TEH LAME! LULZ!!!11!!!"

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

I punctuate properly as well, the predictive text will happily handle singular noun apostrophe s but would complain if I left out the apostrophe.

[emperor]

I try and get my language right when texting, but don't always succeed (as you may have noticed :)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Lynne Truss reports similar claims from her vox pop in Eats Shoots'n'Leaves:

Now, there are many people who claim that they do fully punctuate text messages. For Cutting a Dash, we asked people in the street (outside the Palladium Theatre, as it happens, at about 5pm) if they used proper punctuation when sending text messages, and were surprised – not to say incredulous – when nine of out ten people said yes. Some of them said they used semicolons and parentheses and everything.
[...]
But do you know what? I didn't believe those people. Either they were weirdly self-selecting or they were simply lying for the microphone.

http://www.eatsshootsandleaves.com/eslex.html

[j4.livejournal.com]

Nnnngghhhh.

But do you know what? I didn't believe those people.

What, as well as being incredulous, she didn't believe them? Amazing.

You know what? I don't believe she makes up her own books. I think she just steals other people's blog posts.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

I also spell and punctuate my texts properly. I can't stand the use of ur to mean your and not, for example, Ur.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I use semicolons *more* when txting - when going for brevity you don't want to write "consequently" more than necessary.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The biggest advantage of my shiny Samsung phone over the Razr is that the apostrophe is only five keystrokes away.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Five? It's only three on my Nokia! :^)

[imc.livejournal.com]

I resent the implication that ox.test was not punctuated properly!

I probably write better punctuated text messages than ICQ/IRC (http://idonotlikepeas.livejournal.com/93920.html?thread=600544#t612832) messages. It takes me ages to write text messages anyway — they might as well be correct. I guess I may have been seen sending sentences without an ending full stop, though.

[j4.livejournal.com]

ox.test was punctuated so pedantically properly that it distorted my perception of the world. Netnews in general has a lot to answer for, though, when it comes to tracking the slow disintegration of my brain from over-achieving childhood into LOL-ing and OMG-ing (nominal) adulthood; well, netnews, and irony. Too much irony in your diet gives you cancer.

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Constipation, maybe.

[redbird]

I don't see why some people say they can't type "I love you" or "I'll be there at 2" as full sentences; I can, and they keep telling me that us old folks don't pick things up as fast as the young.

Like you, I like semicolons.

Have some tea.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ta for the tea. :)

I do use some abbreviations, sometimes, but most of the time the difference between the 10 seconds it takes me to type a phrase in full and the 5 seconds it takes to type it in txtspk form just isn't actually that important to me. I suppose if the text you were sending was "HELP am bng et by lion" it might be important to save those couple of seconds, but what if the person you were texting didn't understand and had to text back to say "WTF r u talkin bout?" -- what then? I mean, by then you'd have been well and truly eaten. At least, that's how I look at it. A semicolon in time saves death-by-lion, I always say.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I suppose txt abbreviations are just keystroke macros that aren't automagically expanded. Pity.

[sparrowsion]

I spend so long organising my thoughts into words, that the amount of time saved by using txtspk forms, particularly taking into account the fact that my phone has a 39-key pseudo-QWERTY keyboard, is a negligable fraction. The value of using abbreviations is getting things down to 160 characters.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I find the miniQWERTYs on Treos harder than thumb-press texting!

I love the challenge of getting things down to 160 characters without resorting to strange abbreviations. Sometimes I spend 10 minutes rewriting the damn thing to get it written elegantly within the limit. Fortunately I have not yet been eaten by a lion as a result (see above, or possibly below).

Thinking about it, the abbreviations I do occasionally use tend to be netnewsy acronyms, which is really just old-person's txtspk. 8-)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Above. Definitely above. Why don't I have proper threading in my brain?

[lnr]

I tend to think of threading as trn-like tree diagrams, which would lead to "see left".

I abbreviate in text messages mostly by using terser sentences and leaving out words rather than shortening them - though usenet acronyms are a bit hard-wired into my speech patterns. And I punctuate them the same way I do other communications: which is to say not very accurately.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

[] colon half-full
[] colon half-empty

(I regret having this thought, but once I did I had to share it.)