The Mail on Sunday has gone into full "hell-in-a-handbasket" mode once again deploring the use of txtspk on a poster designed to encourage kids to think about safety and security when using mobile phones and the internet. The poster uses text message spellings to list a number of safety points. This, of course, will make our children illiterate, undermine the work of English teachers the length and breadth of the land and probably cause the total collapse of society as we know it.
I don't really want to get off into a rant about one of the Mail's rants. Whether it's education, immigration, the economy or the national health service there's rarely a week passes without the Mail climbing onto some reactionary hobby-horse or other. It's almost too commonplace for comment.
The bit that intrigued me was on the poster itself.
Most of it I could only work out with extreme difficulty, but after all the tips have been given, we see this.
"Responsible adults include yr tchaz, parNts n d carers W whom u liv"
Apart from the lack of txtspk on some of the words (presumably because the adults who designed it couldn't work out a readable version) I love that "W whom u liv" a blend of a now uncommon grammatical construction (for most people, especially teens, in spoken English, "that you live with" or just "you live with" is far, far more common) and the txtspk of the poster.
Of course had they put that, the Mail could have had another complaint. Ending sentences with prepositions? The end really would be nigh!
I don't really want to get off into a rant about one of the Mail's rants. Whether it's education, immigration, the economy or the national health service there's rarely a week passes without the Mail climbing onto some reactionary hobby-horse or other. It's almost too commonplace for comment.
The bit that intrigued me was on the poster itself.
Most of it I could only work out with extreme difficulty, but after all the tips have been given, we see this.
"Responsible adults include yr tchaz, parNts n d carers W whom u liv"
Apart from the lack of txtspk on some of the words (presumably because the adults who designed it couldn't work out a readable version) I love that "W whom u liv" a blend of a now uncommon grammatical construction (for most people, especially teens, in spoken English, "that you live with" or just "you live with" is far, far more common) and the txtspk of the poster.
Of course had they put that, the Mail could have had another complaint. Ending sentences with prepositions? The end really would be nigh!
1 comment:
Good to see the "whom" made it through the txt filter.
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