2B or not 2B

The advent of Internet communications and text messaging have resulted in the invention of a language that is increasingly distant from the rules of the English language it is based on. Having successfully etched its place in today’s society, it continues to evolve in tandem with the ingenuity of the online community.

There used to be a time, in the quaint era of letter writing, when the acronym LOL referred to ‘lots of love’ or ‘lots of luck’. Then came the era when writing via electronic communications became ubiquitous and those phrases were swiftly dethroned. As history would have it, LOL evolved into ‘laugh out loud’. Texting, instant messaging and writing on social media platforms, all of which are mostly done using smartphones these days, have encouraged people to convey messages as succinctly as one possibly could, and led to the development of a new mobile language. Rules that the English language abided by were abandoned in this realm. Efforts were put into modifying the language instead and in the process, new norms were created.

There are a variety of conventions coming into play in this modified language sometimes referred to as textism. Abbreviations, acronyms, lack of capitalisations, excessive capitalisations, absence of punctuations and substitution of letters with numerals are some of the many elements unique to this modified language commonly used across messaging and social media platforms. Even news sites have jumped on the bandwagon, using acronyms and hashtags in their social media postings. Despite the prevalence of textism, response to it has been polarising. Those passionate about the English language are perturbed by the popularity and have denounced its prevalent use. Of the view that textism aversely affects people’s vocabulary and their abilities to discern between proper and improper use of the English language, those against this shift are wary.