FYI:411 ON TXT

July 2005

[Part of this piece was inspired by Robert Benchley's "When Genius Remained Your Humble Servant." Find a copy and see what a writer with actual talent can do with this subject.]

I recently received an offer for a new book entitled "The Text Messaging Dictionary," a guide on common abbreviations used in "text messaging." For the three people in the Western Hemisphere who have successfully avoided owning wireless phones, "texting" allows callers to zap tiny messages to each other's phone displays. Now, instead of annoying others around you with your intrusive phone conversations, you can conveniently annoy others every 30 seconds when your phone beeps to announce yet another text message.

It's a sign just how popular texting is. Last year, USA Today reported that 1 billion messages were sent each month. And new studies show that people are now sending love letters, quitting their jobs, and ending relationships all through text messaging. I just don't know if I can feel the author's emotional impact with nuggets like "U4EVER," "TAKJOB+SHOVIT," or "IH8U STOP CLG ME."

You can tell I'm not a fan of texting. The way I figure it, Man started talking to each other in simple grunts. He then invents complex verbal and written languages. And now, millions of years and billions of dollars in technology later, we can grunt at each other from miles away and get charged for the privilage. I marvel at the progress.

I know I get a little obsessive when it comes to language: I bring a red Sharpie marker when I travel into New York City so I can fix the grammatical errors on the subway graffiti. But I have to wonder if all this speed and convenience is really a good thing. Texting -- and it's Internet cousins, instant messaging and e-mail -- all focus on brevity, rather than correct usage. Many people I know have given up using long expressions or correct spelling and grammar when they dash off their latest electronic opus. In fact, the author of "Time Management for Dummies" even encourages business people to disregard grammar and style when writing notes and email. Right, because there's no better way to earn your employees' respect than to bark orders to them in misspelled clipped sentences with a smiley-face at the end of them.

Compare how we write and talk with people from 100 years ago. Our tiny little modern attention spans can't keep up with the long, flowing prose writers wrote in the last century. Imagine someone from Charles Dickens' era writing e-mail today. They could be in an airplane about to make an unscheduled swan dive into the ocean and still write something like this:

"O, dear sister, even now as I feel the harsh, cruel pull of gravity against the metal fuselage, rapidly beckoning us earthward, I wish I had listened to your sage advice to avoid booking passage through any company called Cheapie Airlines. With mere seconds before our impact, I gaze longingly out my window at the brilliant ball of flame that was once our left wing, and it reminds me of the family fireplace back home..."

Okay, so maybe all this technology is just a reflection of the world we live in. Maybe speed and clipped language is the voice of the future. But I have my doubts. I can think of at least one example when a wave of techology that twisted the English language failed to change the world.

True Fact: On Christmas Day 1978, I received a record album entitled "How to CB." (Let's pause for a moment for anyone under the age of 25. Records, or "LPs," were 12-inch black vinyl music disks housed in cardboard sleeves with trippy album art that you'd stare at while listening to see if you recognize any of the guests at the Hotel California.) CB radio chats were really big at the time. At least they were for other people. I was 12, with no car or radio, so it was the one Christmas I actually wished I had gotten socks.

"How to CB" was an instructional album on how to speak the lingo of CB radio users. The serious, deep-voiced narrator introduced Berlitz-style dialog examples that demonstrated phrases like "Breaker, good buddy, you got your ears on? You can dodge the smokeys in the rocking chair, but watch out for that bear in the air." (Bet you didn't know I was biligual, did you?)

By following the dialogs, the album promised, the listener would become proficient enough to enjoy years of conversations on your CB radio. Of course, those years were more like a few hours, since the CB craze lasted about as long as my toddler's attention to me when Elmo appears on Sesame Street.

So I guess I'll pass on the "Text Messaging Dictionary." I'll stick with plain old English, thank you. It was good enough for Shakespeare, Dickens, and Twain, so it's good enough for my poorly-written ideas. And that's a big 10-4, good buddy.

LEGAL STUFF: All content copyright © 1996-2006 Daniel O'Leary. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication, publication, or distribution.

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He has previously written online editorials to NJ-shout.com (RIP), Great Society.org, and Songsource.com, among others. He has also been featured in ShoreGuide and AbsoluteWrite.com.

Dan is a current member of the NetWits humorist's collective.

Since his early twenties, Dan's writings have also been prominently featured on the refrigerator in his parents' home. "Sure, they make no sense," Mrs. O'Leary comments, "but we're proud of him -- no matter what everyone else says."