Please use your vowels

 by: Chienalee Garcia

Txt spk maybe convenient for others but it can get into everyone’s nerves when it goes overboard.

Text messaging is the most reliable form of communication this time using mobile phones. It’s cheaper than calls, and it’s efficient. Surely, everyone will agree if I say that text messaging is indeed a milestone in communication.

But what if this milestone evolves into an even more advanced form called txt lingo? It’s ironic to consider it being advanced since it looks more like caveman language to me.

Looking through text messaging topics online, I found a forum discussing txt speak as some form of menace (yes, a menace, in the same level as body odor and Blairbands) in society. Threaders posted a scenario amongst school kids: A teacher gave an examination to her class, many students responded in a short cut approach like text messages. Do you expect that they will be given a passing mark despite their knowledge to the questions?

In my most humble opinion, those kids don’t deserve a passing mark. Heck, they don’t deserve to pass the subject at all. Who uses txt lingo in examinations? That’s not even allowed in school! How did these kids pass first grade? Seriously. This is clearly a manifestation of the declining rate in knowledge among the youth. I understand that the objective of txt is to use the fewest number of characters needed to convey a comprehensible message, but in doing so punctuation, grammar, and capitalization are principally ignored. Which is a bummer for recipients of such, like me.

Picture this: You wake up one morning and the first message you read on your mobile phone says, “Gud am?! I hope u had a gud nyt’s slip! Eat ur brkfast na pow! Hav a nyc day pow!? Inghatz u!?” How would you react?

In my case, I’d be confused (is he mad or what?) and pretty damn pissed. Ohmyg-word, is that primitive language? There’s hardly a ‘real’ word in there!

Another thing that ticks off recipients of txt lingo is the use of toggle case, or what you call ‘sticky caps’. I once knew of someone who used to send me messages in sticky caps. It was annoying and it pissed the crap out of me every time I got a message from her. I honestly do not get the point of this. If it’s all about aesthetics, then you got it all wrong. I don’t see the beauty in shifting from uppercase to lowercase then uppercase again. It can give you eyestrains.

Someone told me that txt lingo is used in an effort to express individuality and communicate properly. Okaaay… First of all, there is no individuality in texting that way. How can one be unique when about half of the mobile phone-totting populace does it? And secondly, this is clearly not an avenue for proper communication. By butchering the words into unrecognizable mumble jumble, the purpose of effective communication is defeated. So where does that take you?

The government should ban this nasty kind of text lingo. But seriously, enough with the bad txt speak. Let’s make everyone happy.

Text properly.