So after my original post on ‘Save the Vowels’ has received quite interesting responses, I thought I’d continue here.
Thank you to everyone who emailed me about it, but didn’t leave a comment, I never thought this would enrage so many of you.
When I made the post on here, Matt and I simultaniously posted this on 2 forums:
“Are you getting annoyed with txt speak? Bad grammar? Join the ‘Save the Vowels’ Movement! :)
“
Matchbox360 and Console Monster.
It created fairly heated discussions on both with members that use txt spk themselves not having any problems with it and other members getting very annoyed.
There is also another blogger that is annoyed with txt spk. Collin who wrote this amongs other stuff on his ‘About‘ page:
“Txt spks anuver 1 f my grps. Can’t read that? Took me 10 minutes of research to write the damn thing. it says “Text speak is another one of my gripes”. I don’t even TEXT in text speak so why should I have to read it on the net?”
So, several people on forums, other bloggers, so it is not just a select few that are getting annoyed. It is more than I thought.
This is my view on txt spk:
I believe that the English language is a great sounding and easy to pick up language. It uses fairly straightforward grammar and the vocabulary isn’t that big compared to other languages. Many words share the same pronounciation and it is important that they are spelled correctly to keep the meaning.
Over the recent years people have been using txt spk not just in text messages, but also elsewhere. For example on internet forums, in letters, on blogs, IM services and chat rooms.
In my opinion, these people are just lazy. They use txt spk to save themselves time and effort, yet it takes me double the time to read what they are saying. So I have to spend more time/effort, because they are lazy? I don’t think so.
Sure, another option would be to ignore what they are writing, but how exactly do you do that in a thread with several people using txt spk? I would be missing out of opinions and wouldn’t be able to reply properly.
This needs to stop and it needs to stop now, before it is too late!
I want to create the ‘Save the Vowels’ Movement! No more txt spk! Who is with me?
Cat
58 Comments
Too right!
Spread the word! Spread the Vowel Love!
There’s another thing to consider by the way. Most people that use text speak turn off predictive. To write “txt” takes six key presses. To write “text” with predictive enabled takes four.
So we can’t even say they are lazy as it take more effort to write “txt”. Originally it was used because of the 160 character limit in text messages. With that limit resigned to history there’s no reason whatsoever to use text speak anywhere!
:)
Yes, very true. I’ve been using predictive text since, well, I got my first mobile I suppose. The other way os just too complicated. ;)
I’ll stop spamming your blog in a minute, just wanted to mention though, have you seen the reports that are saying that New Zealand school examination boards are now allowing text speak in their exams?
/me shakes his head in disbelief…
Hehe, you’re more than welcome to comment on here, I’m happy about anyone that ends up here. ;)
I have heard of that. I was going to look for the link in a while. It is shocking and I can’t believe it…
http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2006/11/09/new-zealand-embracing-mobile-culture-in-education/
Is one report on it. I thought there was an engadget entry too but I can’t find it. :(
Looks like Scotland are in on it aswell. :(
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-13549967,00.html?f=rss
I’m with you in the Save your vowels movement!
The limit of words in chatting and text messaging has created this really painful ‘online’ language and ‘sms’ lingo which is terribly difficult to understand.Let english be the way it is supposed to be people.
Thanks Ish. :D
Glad to hear of everyone who is so annoyed by it. I am surprised it’s such a high number though.
Woot.
5 Diggs! :-p
Maybe you should put the link to the Digg story on here so we can get that up the list a bit?
And now Ish linked back to as well. Matt, I think this is really taking up shape. I’ve never had so many blogvisits. :D
I love the idea of save the vowels and cannot believe that they are allowing text speaking in exams! If they do continue doing that, we are going to lose the english language and end up with words some of us cannot even understand like dis instead of this.
Yeah, I know, what is this world coming to? In a few years no one will be writing normal English any more. :(
Welcome to my blog, Sha, glad you dropped by. :)
(I’m working on making people happier when they visit my blog, does it work?)
It does :)
Wohoo! Right, I shall work on that even more, so my blog is a place people like to come to. (Don’t mind me, I’ve gone crazy in the last few hours, it’s been a long day!) ;)
Yep it does work :D
Yey. :D
My link probably got lost in the way…..
I swear this isn’t meant as shameless self-promotion; mostly I thought you’d be amused. I’ve long been annoyed by the whole phenomenon as I’m a 33-year-old who plays Warcraft, and I’m a writer by trade, so the kind of English-slaying I see in the chat channels drives me insane. Folks often excuse it by saying, “as long as people understand what I’m saying it doesn’t matter if my grammar/spelling are okay!” to which I always want to reply, “EXACTLY!” Half the time the things these folks say either take too long to interpret (as you say) or could actually mean any one of several things because they’ve been so careless with their words.
So, some time ago, I made a shirt design at cafepress that expresses my feelings on the matter in language I figured such people would understand: LRN2TYPE!
I’m passing your blog post link on to an editor friend of mine. I think she’ll be highly amused. ;)
Oh, I’ve always wanted to play Wow! But yeah, especially in games and the games community the spelling is bad. I’m involved in some of the UK’s largest Xbox 360 communities and the spelling of some is just shocking.
I do like the design, shame that shipping stuff to the UK is too expensive.
Please do spread the word, the more people complain, the better. :D
heather’s friend here. perhaps a “SV TH VWLS” shirt is in order.
Welcome, Heather’s friend. ;)
I was debating of getting another image that is missing all the vowels, just to prove a point, but a Tshirt is as good. :)
I aime pro-vouwele. Hecke… Ie thinke wee oughtoa adde mooore of theome to lainguage.
Basilee, that is really funny. I hadn’t though of adding MORE vowels. Gotta hand it to you there. :D
Gah…now cat’s site got blocked ~grumbles about the filtering system~ Twas about the porn links this time. I got those google ones too…was a real pain!
Hmm, how did that comment end up in here?
pr0n links? Where? What?
People become lazy and fail to develop the skill of writing English correctly – a bad habit that will lead to trouble in school and at work. It’s not like you have to actually BUY the vowels (a la Wheel of Fortune). They’re free. So go ahead, use them all you like. How many things in this world are free anyway?
Sorry guys, my school filtering system was being stupid yet again. Oh well…now three weeks free of that system!
Ish: Probably the spam that failed to get posted
To make this relevant: SAVE THE VOWELS.
I’ll definitely join.
It’s amazing how many people are joining this far after it was posted, Cat.
@ Judy: I know, it’s such a silly thing. People used to be able to excuse it by saying that actual text messages on mobiles/cellphones cannot be longer than 150 characters, but they aren’t any more. I don’t understand it.
@ renaiken: Glad to hear it. :D
@ Matt: That’s because this post keeps appearing on different sites and people link to it. ;)
We need to get a spokesperson for SAVE THE VOWELS.
Maybe Sally Struthers….”For only 3 cents a day, you can help an on-line instant messenger or someone sending text messages spell words correct. Isn’t it time you reached out and stopped the damage being done to the English language. Only you can SAVE THE VOWELS. Please.”
Something has to be done!
I have no idea who Sally Struthers is….
But, expect some more ‘Save the Vowels’ in the new year. ;)
Thanks for your interest. :D
I’m with you! I abhor lazy spelling, punctuation (or lack thereof) and other affronts to proper English.
Thanks for stopping by, icedmocha. :D
I have to say I am guilty of incorrect punctuation, but it is very different to German. Spelling is just annoying.
I am a big technology fan (i.e. geek) but I also love writing, so seeing anything like OMFGWTFBBQLOL makes me sick. People moan at me when I text them because I use full words instead of shortening them. The reason I hate it so much is that is does mess up your writing ability. You forget how to spell certain words!
No wonder I feel at home on Roleplay Servers in World of Warcraft. *chuckles*
Yeah, that is something I noticed as well. when I didn’t bother too much about my writing and started abbreviating things, I just forgot or found it a lot harder to spell properly.
There is this whole belief that geeks constantly write like you said. Well, I’m a geek and I don’t and neither do many others I know.
For the most part I understand text speak but I never use it with the exception of when my teacher tells me to use it in IT class. As I’m dislexic I have worked long and hard to improve my spelling and grammar but it’s still not perfect. However it does irk me when a friend e-mails me and it takes me 2 minutes to work out what they actually ment. I also think that the anacronym LOL is used far too much and at least 50% of the time can’t be sincere.
FUCKING THANK YOU!!!!! I am a Ringmaster on Flyff, so every 5 minuets, this happens ten fucking times…”Buff plz” “Buff Pls” “Buff Pl0x”…Pl0x? What the fuck is pl0x? I’ve even seen plixels. PLEASE IS SHORTER THAN THAT!!! So many things about txt-tlk bug the shit out of me so Thank you for that. I think I may be the only geek against txt-tlk…
Could i get the code for that banner? I forgot to mention that. XD.
Haha, that’s quite a strong response and trust me, you’re not the only geek against it!
As for the code, well it’s a .gif image hosted on imageshack. Here you are:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3920/spellvf1.gif
:)
I just noticed the dates, so perhaps I’m a little late, but I’m joining the movement. Actually, I first saw that banner a few days ago, and looked up “save the vowels.” I’m obsessed with the English language and text speak makes me twitch.
Yeah, I never did have time to have more come out of this, although it’s a shame, more people should be aware of it.
Feel free to spread the word. :)
I saw this banner years ago, but just recently, I searched “Save the Vowels” in Google, and I found this site, explaining the movement.
As a result, I’d love to join the movement!
But how do you put it under a signature, eh? Would someone please help me with that?
Wow, I am officially joining this movement! You know, Cat,…it’s actually gotten so bad here in the States that people actually say “L.O.L.” out loud. That’s right, some people, instead of actually laughing,…
…
…
…say “LAWL!”
i’m with you!
It’s not even faster to write in ‘txt” talk
To write text its 4 letters instead of 3.
What is the point in sounding like an illiterate idiot for the sake of not pressing 1-2 letters ??
So right. I hate people who don’t even try typing their words out. It irritates me.
I don’t like it too when people abbreviate everything they say when using a cellphone
I’m so with you.
Just so I don’t go completely insane, I’ve grown used to some of the txt words. I’ll allow “u” without my teeth grinding too much. The thing that has been getting to me lately are those who use txt spk AND spell the word out. Ppl is turning into my most hated. I’ve seen people use ppl and type people within the same paragraph. WHY?
This subject always gets me ranting.
haha
As mentioned in a couple other places here is something I came up with…
You’ve heard of the old saying.. Stop and smell the roses.
Well, I’ve come up with one that fits this day and age… Stop and type the words out.
I’m horribly late to the party, but I hope you don’t mind; I’ve linked to this post at the bottom of my blog, along with that fantastic banner. :-)
I can’t agree with you more; I’ve written a couple of posts about this phenomenon on my blog, and some can argue that English is a language that evolves over time, but I don’t believe that thinking individuals can seriously justify ‘txt spk’. The only reason that people don’t want to type out full words and use proper grammar is simply bone-idle laziness. And if it’s not nipped in the bud now, it’s just going to get worse…
yAH LEWL i wunt 2 join yer 1337 sp33k moovment…it are kewlzor
U dunt c me complaning cuz ur usin smileys.
y dunt you learn how 2 say “Colon D”?
gosh. use proper language.
semi-colon D.
itz lolspeek not txt tlk,
stupidz lern it. >:3
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
This movement is stupid. Are you that bored with your life that u have to start a stupid movement like this.Omg he just spelled text like txt my intellectual mind is gonna burst. Like seriously get over your self dude.
so wat iz dis website again? r u guys lke a movement? cuz dis sounds pretty cool lol
OMG I know, I am SO GLAD someone’s finally pointing out how lazy our generation has become. It probably has something to do with moral degradation or something like that.
I mean, it’s not like other low-bandwidth channels for transmitting English text abbreviate things like crazy, right? Right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations
Okay, so I apologize for the facetious tone. But, honestly, all of this “txt speak is the devil, and these darn kids should grow up and learn to type in ‘real English’” is ridiculous. There are good reasons for abbreviating in text messaging: typing is slow (way slower than Morse code in terms of how long it takes to send a given message, for that matter), and there’s a ton of redundancy in normal English spelling.
To put a number on it, there is something like 4 or 5 bits of information per letter in a string of random Latin letters, but only 1 or 2 bits of information in each character of written English, so you coud, in theory, do with half or a third as many letters and still convey the same message perfectly. And that’s not even considering things like syntax and topic (which add further redundancy).
Another point is that people “abbreviate” in spoken English ALL THE TIME, even highly educated, very articulate people, but we as listeners are so good at decoding the “abbreviations” that it sounds perfectly natural. In fact, it sounds downright strange to hear someone articulating every single sound perfectly clearly.
So: don’t hate on txt-speak, appreciate the subtle and refined grasp of communicative efficiency that its use reveals.
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[...] If you want to read some of the responses and comments Cat has gotten, here is the bigger post she made on the subject… [...]
[...] Today’s overbusy generation has totally shifted from a clean english to a totally full of slangs un-understandable english.In trying to save time and money,we’ve compressed our sentences and words like they’re some pathetic little .zip or .rar files.Please remember that we don’t have WinZip and WinRar fitted in our brains to decode this kind of a language.Atleast I don’t and so,I’m totally against “txt spk” and am a part of Save the Vowels!.I firstly read about this on Cat’s blog under this post. [...]
[...] Most viewed post: ‘Save the Vowels!’ – My view [...]
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[...] in 2006 I first blogged about language and my hate for txt spk. None of that has changed. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); [...]