Emerging new writing style

An interesting counterpoint to the texting mode:

A Point of View: In defence of obscure words
by Will Self

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17777556

I didn't know that defence is the british way of spelling it.

Birth, life, then slow death (starting just recently but well under way)

Lust well put

Well put Finn
I'd tolerate abbreviation but the fractured grammar and lack of punctuation are deplorable

you forgot rebirth

Good'n' Beth. How is it done by the way

It should be a matter of cut and paste but as with some sites it's horrendously difficult

Natch

I know I say this pretty much every time texting comes up, but the "emerging new writing style" part was too much to resist...

When I got my first tty (teletypewriter/ telecommunication device for the deaf) in about 1984, "text speak" was already a thing. There were a bunch of abbreviations, alternate spellings, etc. that were used for typed communication on the tty. Many of those have moved over to texting.

So I've been reading and writing in this "new" style for almost 30 years.

Good point, Soz. I, too, am familiar with a great deal of this stuff from having worked with teletypes as a wire service (UPI) reporter back in the 1960s, early '70s. We called it cabelese and used these contractions and abbreviations and word substitutions quite commonly in messaging back and forth. These machines allowed no punctuation except for a dot (full stop/period, take your pick). So a question would be ended by typing "...query." And so on. The point is, these locutions were in use in messaging only. No newsman (as far as I know) ever tried to sneak cabelese into a story they were working on or put it into a more formal letter they were writing. That's the difference with texting. Texters forget that it's a specialized usage and think this is, somehow, acceptable standard English.

Well, not necessarily. I think writing stuff on a message board is a middle ground between texting (or cabling or tty-ing) and a newspaper story.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people we see using that kind of language here are in fact typing on their phones, for example.

I tend to use "proper" English here, but it's still more colloquial/ casual than how I write professionally. And when I'm texting people I can go whole-hog with textspeak. It's not that I don't know how to use any other kind of English, just a matter of context.

So, you agree with my sarcastic comment?

I took it at face value.

I realize this is entirely OT but what's an "img" ?

image

Thanks Andy but what does it do (if it's involved we might consider a separate thread)

It's not that involved. It's a way of inserting artwork ('image') into your post here. You capture the URL of the picture you wish to post, type out [img], copy the URL and type [/img]. What you see in front of you is all type. But after you've clicked on 'Reply,' what comes up for all to see is not type but the picture. (If you did it right, that is. )

Here's an example. I just went to my profile page and got the URL for my avatar by right-clicking on it and then clicking on 'copy URL.' Here's the avatar, 'pasted' in:

and here's Ceili:

Aha! I see. Thanks Andy