Oh, how technology ruins grammar...

I'm sure you, like myself, are inundated with text messages or chat messages on your computer with language like "omg hru?", which of course means "Oh my god, how are you?" Like a plague, such acronyms and abbreviations have cannibalized the way we communicate to such an extent, that it has penetrated our everyday life and how we interact. Proper etiquette in letters and formal written documents have also fallen prey to the laziness we face when trying to type to our friends and family. I can't begin to tell you the times I've heard COLLEGE professors talk about how they found a 'LOL' in a paper a student submitted for a grade. By god, I hope that person failed.

But realistically, is typing "hey, wht r u up 2??" so much faster that you, 9 times out of 10, elect to use that instead of sounding literate and going with "Hey, what are you up to?" It may just be a pet peeve of mine that people at least attempt to sound educated when talking on a public forum to hundreds or thousands of people. Facebook is notorious for this kind of grammatical nightmare, and as such, a website has been created just to make fun of the people who'd rather hit send before briefly checking what they typed. And that website is!




Seriously, even though you're not getting graded to use a spell checker, you still look dumb for not doing it. But aside from raging about it, it's honestly a little upsetting. I grew up in the world of technology, and will rarely use the whole "Lol" or will use emoticons to express emotion on an otherwise emotionless medium, but as I've gotten older and grown accustomed to computers being an integral part of my live, I've begun to become increasingly paranoid about how I portray myself online via text. If i were to make a serious post on Facebook about how angry I was, but fail to use any sort of punctuation, would anyone take that seriously?

I'm not saying invoke the grammar police for everything little detail of your posts; I'm saying at LEAST use a spell checker, and for the love of God USE PUNCTUATION.