"hi sharanya! how u? hows evrythng..v shd meet smetime!" read a post on my Facebook wall. I winced when I read this post, cursing my luck for knowing a person that wrote so "badly" and then cursing Facebook for broadcasting this enquiry on all my 200 friends' homepages. How they would poke fun at this post, and how they would think low of me, for having a friend that couldn't even frame a sentence without a spell check error. I do agree that Facebook is an informal platform and nobody expects you to follow all rules of spelling and grammar. But, I thoroughly detest this distortion of the English language. It is painful enough to read people's SMSes rife with grotesque short forms of already short words and now the laziness has infected qwerty users! It's hard to term it laziness even. How can one possibly feel lazy to type a "we" as against a "v"? It's not laziness. It's sheer disregard for the language and its norms.
I have a psychological block against users of this notorious tongue. I get the feeling that these are people who are not confident in their language and use this as a mechanism to conceal their linguistic limitations. Honestly, I find it much harder to read a message that doesn't spell the words the way they are supposed to be! I find it confusing to miss letters in the words that I read. Ironically, the universal essence of communication (in any form) is to ensure that the recipient understands the message. Sigh. I hope I've convinced you to abstain from employing spelling cryptography. Each time you're tempted to use it in the future, think of this post. Think of people like me who would cringe at the usage and deem it to be a sign of lack of sophistication, or worse still, lack of knowledge! If you must know, there are tons of us puritans out there. Now, who wouldn't like to put in a trifle of extra effort, if it means creating a good impression, right?
Finally, a sincere request. Next time you want to say "anyway", say anyway. Please don't say anyways. Its even one less letter to type!
