Response coursework

Nine years ago, a man named John Humphreys published an article with the title ‘I h8 txt msgs’. This article was expressing his feelings about how texting in ‘Slanguage’ is ‘Pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences and raping our vocabulary.’ He also demands that this must stop.

I can understand that John Humphrys is angry at this. However it is something that our generation is born into in these days. In addition the kids are obviously going to adapt to that type of lifestyle. An example of this is if I was to give a smartphone to someone who lived in the 80s or 90s when they were my age, they would think it is some sort of alien device and would not believe what it can do (e.g texting other people using several services such as whatsapp,viber, sms, etc). This is because they are used to sending letters to each other and also using full words and not trying to take cheeky shrtcts (sorry short-cuts).

I can understand where John Humphrys anger is coming from as he is fuming when seeing people shorten words by a letter or two which in my opinion is lazy and also stupid. However it is something that I do myself as I have been influenced by seeing other people text in that sort of manner, but John Humphrys can argue as much as he can however, people understand what they are saying to each-other when they spk lyk this! (sorry speak like this). Therefore I do not agree with John Humphrys.

In my opinion I think John Humphrys is a bit of a dictionary freak as he was getting angry about the new dictionaries taking away more than 16000 hyphens. It is understandable that he has his own emotions to this because he feels it should have not happened. On the other hand I believe that humans in our generation don’t care about it anymore as long as they understand the words. This is because they have become more lazy.

One change I see in the present day is the difference in who they text, this is seen in my own texting as I change the way I talk to my friends than to my family. If I was to talk to my friends, I would talk to them on whatsapp. this is mainly because it is a free server (for a year) and all you need in order to use this is internet access. However when I do text  my friends I usually shorten my words as it is a way that lets our generation communicate to each other in a more comfortable way and also understandable.

Studies have shown that one in 20 kids our age tend to not use “slanguage” when texting and rather use full sentences and words. However this changes when I text to my parents or my family. When I talk with my family over the phone, I would prefer to use the sms system as it is a more polite and formal way to communicate. It is something that my parents know how to use and also when some one sends you a text message it is automatically notificated on the persons phone, this also hints that it is important when someone texts you. Also I tend to use full words, start my sentences with capital letters and also end them with full stops. Not only does this show respect to who I talk to, it also enables my parents to understand what I am trying to say and also express my opinion, this is because they do not understand texting in ‘slanguage’ as they were brought up to write on papers and did not have these smart-phones and gadgets that we do today.

Although John Humphrys has got a valid point in what he is arguing about, personally I believe that it will not affect kids our age because when we are going to write an email or homework, we will use formal writing and not “Slanguage”. Again it is a form of message and that is why we do not use it. Some people could be mistaken to write in “Slanguage”. However in school they will be using pen and paper to write. If you are texting in this generation you will see a massive difference in how I am writing now, and how I will be writing in a text. This is because this is a piece of coursework and I will not be writing in a txt form as ppl will not undrstnd wat I am sayin( sorry won’t understand what I am saying).  😛