SteveH in "opinion based on fact" shock

Apr 14, 2005 35 Replies

I personally find communicating via sms much more effective using proper english. If I can't fit what I want to say in, I'll send another message. I think "txt spk" is just born out of idleness.

I also find using a phone's predictive text features means I actually use roughly the same number of keystrokes as I would if I was attempting to condense words into letters and numbers.

Douglas

txt spk dates back to the early days of internet chat rooms when bandwidth was expensive and exceptionally slow. Cutting 20% off a message made a lot of sense back then.

Did they also fail to teach the use of news readers. ;)

I know the initial letters thing was common parlance on BBS before this stuff got off the ground to that extent.

NLASA though. This would chop a good% off the post. It's never been a factor in mobile phone text messages as they charge by the message, not by the bandwidth.

(Not bothering to put the vowels in goes back to Egypt and earlier. I suppose it may have made sense there in terms of reducing the number of hieroglyphs the stonemasons had to chisel ;).)

Ditto. I have no idea what these are --> past participle, conjugating verbs

I rekon I've got a pretty good grasp of how things work - so I'll plump for some osmosis :)

I must admit I never got the hang of texting, maybe because I don't like mobile phones (or any phones for that matter)

I just use them. Easy enough to type in a number and press the green icon, and when you can't talk to the other person for various reasons it is excellent to just type a message in for when they are available to read it.

Predictive text works just fine, txtspk isn't in the dictionary so it's all proper english words (on the whole). Well, it is once you've learned the phone as to what swearwords you'll be needing, which can take some time.

On the BBS it was de rigeur to use TLAs and trim quotes, and so forth. If you didn't do it, you would be told off and the sysop would eventually lock you out of the BBS. Wasn't optional.

Sounds about right - on the course I was on, Tonmeister (that's Music and Sound Recording, at Surrey uni), which is a very selective course - around

600 applicants per year for 20 places, included modules of Maths and Electronics, which were actually taught be lecturers from the Electronic Engineering and Maths departments, and the guy that took us for Electronics actually said that we were the students his department wanted, but couldn't get! In other words, Tonmeister students were generally *much* brighter than the average ElecEng student (due to the fact that they were much more selective, because they could afford to be).

Send another message, or just carry it on into a multiple message, that most phones recognise, and even if not, it's still backwards compatible with older phones anyway as it just splits it up.

Precisely. It's the number of keystrokes thing that makes it easier to use predictive text. I tried to say something similar in another message, but it probably took about 5 paragraphs for me to explain what you've managed in

3 lines. D'oh!

And?

I can speak my own, German, Italian and I can get by in French to an extent. The problem isn't with the kids, its with the crappy standards of teaching.

Which was nice.

I think that's been the whole point of the thread...

Richard

I think all foreigners should be made to learn and speak perfect english so i don't have to learn more languages :)

That, and if they want a single currency in Europe, they can all adopt the pound.

-- JackH

Fazer 600

Just save the txtspk words into the dictionary, simple :) Although on my

6630 it already has some txtspk saved already 'l8r' being the first i noticed.

I hate it tho and with the exception of a few words [1] i use "proper" english, commas an all.

I agree with the language bit, not the currency tho. Unless we get one without 'yer one' on it

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