Thursday, March 11, 2010

On spelling

Hava yaa avar plaaed tha changa all vawals gama? Ni? Ot’s voro ooso. Jest chenge ell the vewels en e sentence te jest ene – leke e. Ur u. Ir i. Yoy gyt thy ydyy.*


Correct spelling and proper use of language makes reading all the much easier. Don’t get me wrong, I am no expert. Not just because of the second language thing – I make my share of both spelling- and grammar errors in Norwegian too (perhaps more so recently, seeing as all my writing tends to be in English). But at least I try. I purposely avoid simplifications even in text messages or on Facebook – you won’t find me writing “C U 2morrow” anytime soon (is that even what they write? “morrow” looks very long ãnd proper for SMS-lingo…). It takes so little effort to spend those extra seconds typing the whole thing, and it makes reading a lot easier.

I’m not saying that your writing is bad if you do result to short cuts like the above. By all means, I am all for believing that one person can master different styles of writing. For instance, there is a considerable difference between how I write my thesis and how I write my blog (fortunately). Still, I do notice that the two occasionally influence each other. Usually, it’s my thesis influencing my blog and not the other way around (again, fortunately – for instance my rapid use of parentheses and italics in my blog would be absolutely frowned upon academically). If I have spent considerable amounts on time writing serious, depressing, hard-core academic skullduggery (or so it sometimes feel), I can often see that my blog either takes on a more serious tone than usual; or the complete opposite. Sometimes it seems as though my creativity bubbles over from having been constrained for too long.

But I digress (see what I mean – I’m really not cut out to having to stick to one topic at the time…).

Even if there probably are some people who are able to interchange proper spelling and SMS-lingo perfectly, I have no doubt that for most of us this is not the case. Generally, we are too easily influenced. Therefore, I would highly appreciate if people would use complete. Sentences. Even if. They are only. Posting on Facebook. Please?

Ynd yf yyy cyn’t dy thyt, Y wyyld hyghly ypprycyyty yf yyy dydn’t bythyr my wyth yyyr byll shyt…**


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


*Have you ever played the change all vowels game? No? It’s very easy. Just change all the vowels in a sentence to just one – like e. Or u. Or y (*snort*). You get the idea (I hope – if not, this translation was made for your convenience).

**I’ll let you all figure this one out yourselves…

6 comments:

Not Hannah said...

Oh, lady. You better not visit my blog today, because I'm talking made up words and sentence fragments EVERYWHERE. On a strange, sorta related note, Will can spell "toilet" four different ways on the same shopping list. It has become oddly soothing to me.

Natasha said...

I can never understand why people should resort to such stupid shortcuts, specially when mobile phones have the predictive text feature which makes spelling so easy.

Reminds me of the time when we went through the nick name phase - We took the first three letters of the name and added a "u" at the end to make a nickname. Why we bothered with Rita, Sona and Tina, I am yet to figure out.

Cruella Collett said...

Huh. And here I could have sworn I already commented on this... (What blog did I write that on, then?!?)

Anyway...

NotHannah - but I did visit your blog, and it was absolutely lovely. I have problems with uneccesary abbreviations, not made up words. I love made up words! I'd make one right now had I thought of something that needed a word...
(More interesting, though - why does your husband put "toilet" on the shopping list at all - does he often go toilet shopping? *snort*)

Natasha - my thought exactly! Cell phones no longer favour those who use cell phone speak!
And I find the nick naming amusing - I would be Maru *snort* Or Cruu *giggles*

Marjorie said...

I so AGREE! My least favorite abreviation? Gr8. UUGH! I mean stop being so flipping lazy people! Use proper English and stop with the dumbing down of the language through text speak. It looks stupid and it makes the people who use it look ignorant and very nearly illiterate. *rant over*

Cruella Collett said...

Marjorie - that is gr8! (Sorry - I had to...) I couldn't agree more with you on that one (obviously, seeing as I started the ranting). I just can't see why people would want to write something like that. Gr8, for digression's sake!

Not Hannah said...

Are you ready? Toilet paper, toilet cleaner, and then the corrections he tries to make.

Also, the gr8 thing reminds me of Ellen Degeneres riffing on people using those fresh breath strips instead of mints. Her point was, "What? Have we become too lazy to suck?"

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