The nineteenth century playwright and philosopher George Bernard Shaw wrote
many articles about the abuse and deterioration of the English language. His story,
‘Pygmalion,’ was used as the basis for the Lerner and Lowe musical, ‘My Fair Lady,’
and Oscar-winning movie, about a Cockney street woman, Eliza, with horrible
speech, transformed by Professor Henry Higgins into a society lady with proper
pronunciation. Today, we have a similar challenge. It’s slowly been infiltrating our
lives since the advent of e-mail, and later, text messaging.
Stenographers, still seen in courtrooms, had been using short cuts for years, by
breaking common syllables into cryptic characters, which they later translate back
into typed words. But beyond that, there is no excuse for what the latest generation
is doing to butcher our sacred language. Sure, we’re used to simple silly
abbreviations like ‘U R’ on everything from bumper stickers to greeting cards.
Substituting numbers for words, as in ‘4′ and ‘8′ is also fairly widespread. But the
real difference is the use of letters for whole phrases or sentences. LOL (laughing
out loud) and ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing) are two examples. Add an
emoticon, the little face made from the punctuation keys, and you’ve got a whole
new language 
As cute as all that is, I’m afraid that we eventually may lose our words and
become a symbol society of coded messages. If we don’t know the meaning of the
following letters, we may be delegated to the world of the literary dinosaurs:
AFK Away from keyboard….BAK Back at keyboard….BFN Bye for now
BBL Be back later….BRB Be right back….CU See you….CYA See ya
LTNS Long time, no…IFUEE I forgot you even existed
TTFN Ta ta for now….L8TR Later….GAL Get a life
HAND Have a nice day….OT Off topic….PU That stinks
TSWC Tell someone who cares….GFETE Grinning from ear to ear
There are probably so many more letter phrases that are being invented as I
type. We’ve come a long way since my early days when ‘Pig Latin,’ was all the rage.
Like ave-fay, un-fay for ‘Have Fun.’ Both of these methods of communicating are
cute and silly, but what if the next generation is so used to these initial shortcuts,
they forget how to write real words or how to spell? Will we be seeing whole books
written using ‘U’ and ‘R’ for the actual words? Will every book come with a decoding
section? Will future dictionaries begin including all these acronyms?
I’m not an alarmist or a wet blanket, but IMHO, (in my humble opinion) I’m just a
bit concerned. It’s probably time for the EOD. (end of discussion) Is Shaw spinning
in his grave? I wonder.
Jeffrey Hauser was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for
nearly 25 years. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising
and has a Master’s Degree from Monmouth University. He had his own
advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design
firm, ABC Advertising. He has authored 6 books and a novel, “Pursuit of the
Phoenix,” available at amazon.com. His latest book is, “Inside the Yellow
Pages.” Currently, he is the Marketing Director for thenurseschoice.com,
a Health Information and Doctor Referral site.