Sup! How r u?

Im good thanx!! 🙂

BRB, gotta rite my column so ttyl, cya l8r k?

Were I ever to actually speak like this, I can only hope I’d be tranquilized and punished. This is not the talk of normal folk, but a bastardization of English only allowable, for reasons yet undetermined, on the Internet.

The beauty of Internet chatting capabilities, of course, is its convenience and ease of use. But these privileges are beaten to a bloody pulp in some circumstances, pushing abbreviations to extremes and killing off entire words or syllables in order to achieve a La-Z-Boy language.

Communicating effectively and communicating easily aren’t always the same thing. Professionalism has been thrown out the window in order to conserve keystrokes and save valuable solitaire-playing seconds. It’s sometimes offensive.

Maybe it’s a good sign we’re not at a point where it’s expected everybody need or want to be able to carry out a full-fledged conversation online. It says, perhaps, that we’re not all so glued to PCs that we’ve not all mastered typing.

But it could just mean we’re lazy and don’t want to put forth the effort required to construct sentences. It was not truly all that long ago that our language flowed effortlessly and beautifully. Today, however, there is no “How fare thee, dear friend?” That flowery language has been killed off in favor of “sup?”

If chatters are in a particularly bright mood, “sup” may be accompanied with four exclamation points and an emoticon, the Internet’s solution to the desire never to look upon another human face again. Linguistic trends come to fashion only when such a great deal of people are fond enough of them to incorporate them into everyday language. So what exactly are we fond of in this instance? Forging a new cyber-language, complete with its own set of grammatical rules? Perhaps, but most cursors are pointing to laziness, not a radical movement to reconstruct English.

That’s what I see, and I know I’m stepping on the toes of all less-than-excellent typists out there. There is bound to be noise when communicating using computers – in this case, misspellings, loss of voice intonation, sometimes even a context for a particular conversation.

But there’s a line between striving for convenience and throwing all the rules of language into the trash. Yes, it’s easier to use choppy fragments when chatting with friends, and chances are few members of your AOL Buddy List are going to reprimand you for a misspelling or even the occasional nonsensical phrase.

Allow me to play the role of English Dork, however, and point out that the chatty trends are a sign of something far worse. Whereas once English was embraced in all its glory and pushed to its extent, we’ve now debased the thing to a sloppy, rusty tool.

We should be able to use language to convey all the complex emotions and thoughts of which humankind is capable. Words should strike feeling into our hearts, bring tears to our eyes and smiles to our faces.

We’re hurtling toward a world of monosyllabic words and inflected grunts. It’s not fair to expect everyone to even mildly master a language, so let’s take the Diet Rite approach – let’s pull out any complicated components of language and fall back on a code we can all understand.

This new form of communicating isn’t altogether worthless or completely a sign that language is spiraling down the drain. There is, certainly, something to be said for abbreviated phrases that lend themselves to ease of use, and most communicators don’t find typing as convenient as simply speaking, which leads to different developments.

But let’s not throw out professionalism, courtesy or literacy. “LOL” is a far cry from Shakespeare.

While I’ve only once been involved in a conversation in which somebody actually did say “LOL” when he meant to laugh, I’m still frightened by what this says about language in general. It’s not a movement I think I’ll join, despite the possible benefits others are enjoying.

C? w/less efort Dvoted 2 big wordz or gramr i hav mor time 4 stuf like chatting w/frendz

It’s a scary sign, my dear literate friends, and not one I think we should allow. So embrace language. Use it with all your might, large words and all.

Cavan Reagan is a senior in journalism and mass communication and English from Bellevue, Neb. He is the student life editor of the Daily.