{"id":1928,"date":"2008-09-12T13:41:55","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T13:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/?p=1928"},"modified":"2025-06-07T16:07:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T16:07:51","slug":"twitter-and-text-speak-are-poisoning-the-english-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/social-media\/twitter\/twitter-and-text-speak-are-poisoning-the-english-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter and text-speak are poisoning the English language"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"frown<\/a>Maybe it’s just me, a grumpy former\u00a0newspaper writing coach.<\/p>\n

But I fear our love\u00a0affair with\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0text messaging and even those\u00a0ubiquitous emoticons is\u00a0poisoning the English language.\u00a0Mari Smith’s Twitter Lingo Demysified\u00a0includes a\u00a0list of the most popular terms\u00a0that many active Twitterers use in everyday tweets, to help them keep their posts within the 140-character limit.<\/p>\n

Even if you don’t tweet, you’re certainly familiar with these:<\/p>\n

OMG = Oh my God\/gosh<\/p>\n

4U = for you<\/p>\n

b\/c = because<\/p>\n

Thx = thanks<\/p>\n

BTW = by the way<\/p>\n

I plead guilty to using those abbreviations not only in my tweets<\/a>, but in emails, too. Somebody, slap me! <\/strong><\/p>\n

They’re also showing up\u00a0all over the Internet—in\u00a0comments at blogs, on classified ads on Craigslist, and on\u00a0people’s Facebook walls.<\/p>\n

That’s not the worst of it. An article<\/a>\u00a0in the Wall Street Journal said\u00a0hiring managers are seeing a frightening number of\u00a0too-casual job-hunters, mostly college graduates and recent grads,\u00a0writing email messages\u00a0such as thank-you notes\u00a0“that contain shorthand language and decorative symbols, while others are sending hasty and poorly thought-out messages to and from mobile devices.”<\/p>\n

Recruiters say that will immediately kill your chances to be hired because\u00a0they hint at\u00a0immaturity and questionable judgment. The Chicago Tribune reports\u00a0that those same abbreviations are even showing up in college essays and term papers.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, on\u00a0Day One of\u00a0the Social Media\u00a0Summit\u00a0in Chicago, sponsored by Ragan Communications, I attended an excellent break-out session on writing for the web and print. Jim Ylisela<\/a>, a longtime writing instructor, demonstrated how\u00a0words matter, whether we’re reading a magazine, skimming a website or blog, listening to a podcast or watching a video.<\/p>\n

After his session, I told him my concerns about the dangers of\u00a0Twitter-speak and text-speak and asked him to share his thoughts. That’s one of the reasons, he said, companies are hungry for writing classes for their employees, particularly younger hires.<\/p>\n

If you tweet, do you find Twitter lingo and\u00a0text-speak\u00a0accidentally slipping into other things you write?<\/p>\n

Do you get annoyed like I do when you read\u00a0tweets\u00a0that are so jam-packed with Twitter shorthand that they resemble Chinese hieroglyphics,\u00a0and you have to read them three times before you finally figure out what the writer is trying to say?\u00a0Or do you simply give up and move on?<\/p>\n

Doesn’t this sort of defeat the whole purpose of using Twitter to amass an army of followers\u00a0who can hardly wait to see what we have to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s just me, a grumpy former\u00a0newspaper writing coach. But I fear our love\u00a0affair with\u00a0Twitter,\u00a0text messaging and even those\u00a0ubiquitous emoticons is\u00a0poisoning the English language.\u00a0Mari Smith’s Twitter Lingo Demysified\u00a0includes a\u00a0list of the most popular terms\u00a0that many active Twitterers use in everyday tweets, to help them keep their posts within the 140-character limit. Even if you don’t\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":9,"wds_primary_category":683,"footnotes":""},"categories":[683],"tags":[634,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-1928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-twitter","7":"tag-craigslist","8":"tag-social-media-trends","9":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41476,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/41476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}