Speaking In Short Hand

Why do we abbreviate things? Have you ever wondered that? It seems to be a thing of this era and generation. Our daily forms of communication have become so advanced and so instant that we've started to abbreviate everything. We are no longer people, we are ppl. We don't even exclaim in full form, it's OMW!! It's about saving time, we are in such a rush to communicate all the millions of ideas that come and go that we have thrown spelling out the window and replaced it with consonants. Ths s hw vry prsn wll strt spking. No more vowels...

You'd think that this would only work in written form but we speak in abbreviations, "Hey J, 1476 was NH..." "The VCR won't run my VHS" "Dinner's ETA is 0-600 hours" ...we sound like we're in the military.

When Instant Messaging (aka IM-ing) became a popular thing, a whole new world of communicating in short-form opened to me. However I was resistant. I usualy am to anything that challenges my upbringing of good ol' fashioned spelling. So while my friends were lol-ing,OMW-ing, H/O-ing, BRB-ing, TTYL-ing, and BFF-ing me, I was standing my ground with my ever so proper "Hold on, I will be right back...Oh My Word! I'm Laughing Out Loud . But I Must Talk To You Later My Best Friend Forever. " I stubbornly hung onto the what had made me ME- proper spelling in everyday communication. I held out for 3 years, contending with new and unknown abbreviations, struggling to communicate with the IM-ing brotherhood. Usually what would occur is my fellow brethren would tell me their whole day's activity in short-hand, while I was still typing out my greeting. Tragic. However the pressure got to me and I gave in becoming a fool to the power of IM and Text Messaging (why don't we call it TMSG?).

This is par for the course of the English Language as it notoriously changes year in and year out. By way of example, on text messaging, accepted words are "Gonna" "Hafta", "Wanna", "Dunno" etc. That right there would have brought my English Lit. average down to a B-. (Did you notice I abbreviated something in that sentence? It's a disease and it spreads look out!)

Nevertheless, the fundamental objective of communication is to convey ideas and thoughts. We do this with hundreds of dialects and languages, we do this with body language, we do this with sign language, we do this by even reading expressions on faces. So why not do it using abreviations and acronyms? As long as the general meaning is transmitted, then what's the harm in a little ATNAT (abbreviated talk now and then)?

In rememberance of a legend- John Lennon (October 9, 1940- December 8, 1980) "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. "