I received this comment from Valerie today in reply to this morning’s post –

“I guess you’re going to have to accept the bad spelling and worse grammar. Did you read “Da Meanin of Life” and “Death by txt” in yesterday’s Irish Times? That’s the way its going to go and if you – and I – are going ahead as bloggers then – what’s bad spelling to do with anything?”

This is too big a subject and requires a rant of its own.

Yes. I did read “Da Meanin of Life” and “Death by txt”, and I found them funny and clever. What I loved was the way they sent up the whole texting business.

I can understand where this text-speak came from. Spelling is a tricky thing. Why do we spell “ate” and “eight” differently? They sound the same. But if you can replace them with “8”, it does save a bit of poking on those fiddly little keyboards. So, for mobile phones, text-speak was accepable. Was.

Now we have predictive text. I use it all the time. It actually uses less key-presses. And it makes sure the spelling is correct. But people are starting to use txt spk in 4rums nd lttrs [and spam!]. There is no excuse for [4] that.

I am not going to get used to bad spelling. It annoys me. It’s a sign of laziness and bad education. I’m going to carry on ranting about it. The same goes for grammar.

I admit to using some modern idioms. But there some I refuse to use.

I watch films, not movies.

If I wanted a watery lager that tasted like gnat’s p*ss I’d order a Budweiser, not a Bud [why does everything have to be abbreviated these days – are they even getting too damn lazy to speak?]

I use the words “so”, “like”, “cool”, “chill” and so on in their proper context.

The list is endless.

I’m old fashioned. That’s just me.

So my answer, Valerie is that probably the future will be full of illiterates who are too lazy to write properly or speak properly. After all, the country is being run by one of them!

But there are a few of us left. So man the ramparts. Don’t let children watch American television. Glue their mobiles phones so they have to use predictive text. And of course get rid of Bertie.

And here is my message to future generations which will forever be archived in the bowels of the Internet:

I feel sorry 4 U that U never done a proper educashun nd never lerned to talk proper. U R missing out on something gr8. It was a langwadge that was handed down by R 4fathers and you have killed it. Mind you, them darn Yanks had a heck of a lot to answer 4 2.