Devolution of Elocution

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W8! Whaa U Say?

“I think what I do is better than inflicting such assaults on the English language as ‘ROFL’ (Rolling On Floor Laughing) or ‘BBFN’ (Bye Bye For Now) or ‘DMFYLOCIAIM’ (Delete Me From Your List Of Contacts, I’m An Illiterate Moron). Still, language is in a constant state of evolution. Perhaps text speak will seem perfectly normal in 50 years’ time. Perhaps there’ll be a 21st-century edition of Shakespeare’s collected works featuring ‘2B/not 2B,’ and the Oxford English Dictionary will define ‘2thless’ and ‘1derment.’

“Perhaps misery memoirs will be written not in prose, but as a series of increasingly downcast emoticons. But let’s look on the bright side. If everyone in the world keeps texting, we’ll all become as mentally stunted as each other, and so nobody will even notice that there’s been a narrowing of the human attention span. Or, as it will surely become known, a10shn spn.”

—Michael Deacon, columnist, The Daily Telegraph, 2009
(Thanks to alert WORDster Javan Kienzle) URL

Editor’s Note: But ideal for Twitter’s in-depth 140-character analysis.

WORD CARTOONIST: Announcing the launch of Nate Pratt, the WORD’s new occasional editorial cartoonist. See “Newspaper Wars.”

CALLING ALL UTAH STATE U. JCOM ALUMS: Where are you? We're updating our alumni list. Please send your current position, title, contact info (including email), graduation year and any news to ted.pease@usu.edu.

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