[HPFGU-OTChatter] Fun With Spelling and Grammar

[Beth]

At 04:03 AM 2/28/03 +0000, Joywitch wrote:
>But the biggest problem, IMO, with bad spelling and grammar, is
>simply that it makes it difficult, or even impossible, to
>communicate.  I recently joined a Yahoo group for a computer game I
>like to play, and at first I thought I had stumbled into a foreign
>group who was speaking a language I wasn't quite familiar with.
>After determining that I was not actually in the Serbo-Croatian or
>Irdu-speaking game fans group, I tried in vain to understand what
>people in the group were saying, but it was just impossible.  The
>posts were so poorly written -- full of words that weren't words and
>nothing resembling punctuation or paragraphs or even sentences --
>that I could only understand maybe one out of every ten.  I don't
>quite get why it doesn't bother the people in that group that they
>can't understand each other, but there you have it.

Actually, you've probably stumbled onto a completely different phenomenon. 
I work daily with computer games. When you play online games, where you can 
"talk" to other people in the game in "real-time", you learn that you have 
to type really fast to get a word in edgewise, and often to get a command 
out to your group before the next wave of enemies attacks. <grin> Because 
of this "time-critical typing", a lot of words have developed common 
abbreviations, which are understood by the online community, but not by 
anyone else outside. (Unfortunately, a lot of these "creative respellings" 
are, indeed, also due to the fact that we've been discussing -- many people 
just can't spell anymore. Sigh.) Changing the alphabet to use numbers and 
symbols for some letters is also considered "kewl" or, more commonly, 
"l33+". ("l33+" translates to "leet", which is short for "elite", and 
somehow, synonymous with cool. Go figure. <grin>)

So, the next time you're in a game group and see "i wuz so pwned, d00d. 
Crashed my toon & had to rezz. Mez, AoE, cleared a red. w00t!", just 
remember -- they're not necessarily uncaring or ignorant. They may just be 
speaking the "new language" of gaming.

Ain't life grand? <grin>

bel