This is something that's been sticking at me for awhile now. Speaking both as someone who spends the bulk of each day trying to get students to express themselves coherently and as someone who tries to express myself as a writer, there are some Internet offenses that I feel can remain unchecked no longer. Here's what needs to change about Internet communication before the English Language completely falls apart.
(A) Emoticons. As a writer, I probably spend way too much time searching for the perfect word to evoke some kind of feeling. It troubles me that these once almost-amusing combinations of characters have evolved to the point that they often appear as automatic "smileys" if you accidentally punctuate your way into one of them.
(B) LOL. Yes. It's time to retire lol and any derivation of it. If something is funny, can't you just type something like "That was really funny!" or "That made me laugh?" And for the people that tag an lol after their own comments... you know, if you have to tell people it was supposed to be funny, you either aren't trusting the rest of us to pick up on the subtleties of the humor or you're throwing up a preemptive white flag and admitting your joke was weak to begin with. LOL should have been extinguished back in 1997.
(C) j/k = just kidding. I have a problem with "just kidding" even in spoken conversation, so to say we don't need the j/k is more of an extension of that because I think "just kidding" should be banished altogether. If you have to tag a "just kidding" in real life conversation, then no, you aren't just kidding, at least not completely. Anytime you hear someone say "just kidding," think hard about what they had said just before. They partially meant it, otherwise why would they have to point out it was just a joke? They're concerned the person they said it to might take it the wrong way because there's likely a grain of truth buried in what they just said, and it's a big enough grain that they expect the other person will recognize it.
(D) Substituting single characters like "u" and "2" for words. You aren't Prince. I'd like to point out that in both of those examples, typing u instead of "you" or 2 instead of "two" or "too" saves you exactly two keystrokes, lazypants. (And only one keystroke in place of "to".) Your life ain't that busy.
(E) WOOT WOOT! No. No more. Generally the people who type this would never make this sound to express their excitement in real life, except in, hopefully, an ironic manner. Stop it.
(F) Fear of capitalization. You all know the rules. Capital letters at the beginnings of sentences, proper names, etc. You knew these rules in fourth grade. Is the shift key in a different room or something? Reach over the pinkie finger and type like a grown-up.
(G) Over-capitalization. I can get behind occasionally writing a few words in all caps to express excitement. I'm talking about the people who have accidentally hit the caps lock button and aren't sure how to turn it back off, and have it on all the time. It used to be considered rude back in Internet 1.0, thought to be a way of shouting at people through your keyboard. Now I think it's just an extension of not capitalizing anything and a convenient way to avoid the shift key.
I'll wear the Grouch Hat proudly over this if you think I should, but in the end, I think if we each can do our parts to make small changes the world will wind up being a better place, filled with better communication, less misunderstanding, and a general heightening of the human condition.
Thank you for your time.
;)
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