What if they had intelligent and insightful things to say? A lot of text-speak is effectively just shorthand, which can be invaluable in a society where actually writing by hand is a skill which is almost never called for EXCEPT on exams. This is equivalent to basing your meritocracy primarily on the quality of their handwriting: It may have worked in ancient China, but it's hopelessly outdated now. I would rather have a paper full of abbreviations than one that isn't finished because the time ran out. If we were talking about, say, a proper academic paper, then I would be inclined to agree with you (presentation and formality are more important when you actually have the time to do it properly).Lord Mountbatten Reborn said:Since I believe in meritocracy, all the text-speak employing exam-takers should fail profoundly and rightly so.
I'd just like to point out that no one used text-speak when it came to telegrams. Price is not an excuse.
Do you expect examiners to understand these abbreviations? People can abbreviate something in an individual way. They'd have to create a table to let the examiner know what the hell they even meant. It's for their benefit as much as the examiner's - a completely unreadable paper may lose many valuable marks merely for its illegibility. I have to make an effort to make sure my handwriting is presentable in terms of how neat it looks - if people must continue to use text-speak, surely they can make an exception for things important to their future lives?OtherSideofSky said:I would rather have a paper full of abbreviations than one that isn't finished because the time ran out.Lord Mountbatten Reborn said:Since I believe in meritocracy, all the text-speak employing exam-takers should fail profoundly and rightly so.
I'd just like to point out that no one used text-speak when it came to telegrams. Price is not an excuse.
My problem here is that, except on exams (and not even on most of those), students are simply no longer required to do a significant amount of writing by hand. It is simply not a skill in which they receive sufficient training to be evaluated on their ability to do it. I remember doing more writing taking three years of Chinese at the end of High School than in the entire rest of my public school classes put together, and I know I'm not alone in this (I was always running out of time on written exams, even though I always did very well on essays composed outside of class). Abbreviations like "lol" obviously have no place in a paper of any kind because they simply don't communicate a relevant concept, but most abbreviations that anyone would use in a good essay are easily decipherable by the average thinking person.Lord Mountbatten Reborn said:Do you expect examiners to understand these abbreviations? People can abbreviate something in an individual way. They'd have to create a table to let the examiner know what the hell they even meant. It's for their benefit as much as the examiner's - a completely unreadable paper may lose many valuable marks merely for its illegibility. I have to make an effort to make sure my handwriting is presentable in terms of how neat it looks - if people must continue to use text-speak, surely they can make an exception for things important to their future lives?OtherSideofSky said:I would rather have a paper full of abbreviations than one that isn't finished because the time ran out.Lord Mountbatten Reborn said:Since I believe in meritocracy, all the text-speak employing exam-takers should fail profoundly and rightly so.
I'd just like to point out that no one used text-speak when it came to telegrams. Price is not an excuse.
You're seriously worried about a decline in English?PolarBearClub said:...but there still seems to be a worrying decline in standards of English...
Yeah, the last time this happened to me, I just walked away from the person who said it. Didn't let them finish their sentence, either. I then explained later that I couldn't talk to them ever again.Quaxar said:Oh you Dutch with your clever half-internet language.rokkolpo said:well i'm allowed to say ''lol'' and ''U'' in real life.
since in Holland those are real words.
lol=fun
U=you, but only to people in a higher formal/social rank than you. (like a boss, or your parents) also elders.
I hate it when people say "lol" in RL (except Dutch of course), it just makes me want to kick them in the face. If you want to "laugh out loud" then just laugh out loud damnit!