www.alphadictionary.com

First, full disclosure. I have always hated writing by hand. My thoughts fly faster than my fist, so I scribble as fast as I can. That means most of my stuff is illegible to everyone else. Second, I got mad when I looked at my mother's Gregg shorthand book. If you can write that fast in Gregg, why don't they teach it in the first grade and use it in books and stuff? No weirder than Arabic. Finally the medium IS the message, so testing and twitter will unavoidably affect the language.

Consider: if tweets are limited to 140 characters, then writing "u r" saves 4 spaces over "you are." Since Twitter cuts you off at 140, you may have to go back and shorten your rant. Abbrevations make it easier. Further, emoticons and special abbreviations such as "lol" help communicate whether your post is serious or not.

If you are a purist, all such shortenings will offend you. I sympathize as one who shudders at the intransitive use of "lay." But we will soon find "lol" and "u r" appearing in "normal" writing. After all, have you read Woodhouse?

As an old geezer I neither text nor tweet. My wife texts but she is not a geezer. I tell her talking on the phone is much easier than texting. Neither of us tweets. I write many e-mails but they are usually long and, I say modestly, scholarly.

Texting is becoming a necessity. I have a 50 yr old neice who nevr checks email but will quickly respond to a text. Others of my acquaintance are also like this.

Perry Lassiter.

Alas!