Hw r u 2 day?
The New York Times reports that text messaging is our new shorthand. For example, when I write “brb” in my instant messenger it means–”be right back.” Or if I type text message using my cell phone, which I hate doing, I always substitute “u” for “you.” or “r” for “are.” OR for laughing I automatically use “lol.” It’s become second nature for me to text message using shorthand.
The Pleasures of the Text
By CHARLES McGRATH
As with any language, efficiency isn’t everything. There’s also the issue of style. Among inventive users, and younger ones especially, text-messaging has taken on many of the characteristics of hip-hop, with so much of which it conveniently overlaps - in the substitution of “z” for “s,” for example, “a,” for “er” and “d” for “th.” Like hip-hop, text-messaging is what the scholars call “performative”; it’s writing that aspires to the condition of speech. And sometimes when it makes abundant use of emoticons, it strives not for clarity so much as a kind of rebus-like cleverness, in which showing off is part of the point. A text-message version of “Paradise Lost” - or of the prologue, anyway - that tries for a little more shnizzle might go like this: “Sing hvnly mewz dat on d :X mtntp inspyrd dat shephrd hu 1st tot d chozn seed in d begnin hw d hvn n erth @{rcub};– outa chaos.”
