I’m in college and I write like I’m in sixth grade
I’m not the best writer. My grammar leaves something to be desired, I love throwing in radom commas, and my spelling is atrocious (see?) But… I try. English was my hardest class all through school, at least until I got to the point that I could start writing stories and such more often.
But please – in my senior of high school (a forlorn 10+ years ago,) I was in Advance Placement English and considered myself at the low end of the scale there. Yet one girl in the class had problems with they’re, their, and there. Not to mention a complete lack of a grasp of capitals.
Now I’m going to really show my age (and probally geekiness,) but I know why short hand became popular on the Internet. When you’re connected on a 300 baud or less modem you could type faster then the characters were echoed back to you. So people would do the old bc instead of because, and the whole smiley face revolution happened.
In college I would go on the Moo’s and thought that for the most part we were well educated people who typed out sentances in full to get a point across. Sure there was some short hand, LOL, RTFM, ROFL all came out of that. But for the sake of sanity! U does not equal you!
I was chatting with this guy online who claimed to be a professor of some history department on the East Coast. And he said something like “Are u sure?” I mean… that’s for kids who are in sixth grade! Add the friggin’ y and o you idiot. Nothing destroys your credibility as an educated person then shorthanding a word that is only three letters long in the first place!
*sigh* Oh well… I guess I’ll either die as a relic, or I’ll need to keep up with the cultural revolution. I didn’t officially reconize that the Internet was “popular,” until about 1997. At which time I conviced the boss at work to start an ISP. Of course I still believe that the Commodore 64 was the pinnacle of computer evolution, even though graphically and sound wise it’s been surpassed years ago.
I’m still convinced that Pirates! and Below the Root are the best games ever, despite having been hooked on the Civilization series since it first came out. And I still believe that my 1995 Ford Crown Victoria is *the* car.. despite drastically rising gas prices.