I read a promo from a Web hosting startup which seemed to have good prices. However, their “about” page was a joke — it honestly looked as though some 7th grade boys got together and sent texts to each other to hash it out, leaving in all misspellings and lolspeak.

Writing conversationally is an art. It’s important to do it in such a way that you sound like a personable voice — rather than an infantile, ignorant idiot. (Alliteration: I haz it.)

To sum up: yes.

Techzen’s “pseudophilosophy” aside, there is no excuse, no justification for lack of attention to detail, failure to obey the rules. There is no excuse for being sloppy. There are tools out there to assist you with spelling and grammar. There are schools to teach you the rules. Perhaps instead of figuring out how to ditch class, avoid learning, and find parties, our little darlings should stay in class, learn the rules, learn how to write and speak the language, and learn how to be a part of society. To do otherwise is to let gang language and gang pseudoculture win.

Thumbs down!

Sure, it’s perfectly acceptable to address pals with a sentence such as: “Yo, wher U B chillin 2-nite?”

However, if you address a prospective employer, coworker, professional conference or business prospect with such nonsense, you show disrespect, poor judgment and also present yourself as uneducated and undisciplined. This is true whether these impressions are intended or correct, or not intended or correct.

When you speak with your children or subordinates, or in the presence of them in this manner, you not only present these same impressions, but also present the impression that you believe such behavior is perfectly proper. They become disadvantaged by having a poor example of how to properly communicate, and how to judge their audience and communicate properly with them.

As with any art form, the intended audience in verbal and written communication must be considered, or the meaning, context and intention is likely to be lost.

As for punctuation, take the following sentence – by adding 1 simple comma, the entire meaning is changed:

1} ‘My wife doesn’t understand me’
2} ‘My wife doesn’t, understand me?’

How can we expect folks to understand what we’re trying to say, if we don’t give any clues?

…ours is a mongrel language which started with a child’s vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and preserving the memory of the revered crime.
- Mark Twain

This is as a person who recently had to understand an email sent as a single multi-line sentence, with no sentence structure and with large numbers of the words in ‘SMS’ form. I had to send back a summary mail to confirm that I had understood the details.