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.