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Not a fan of ‘net lingo

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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I got this e-mail the other day from a friend. I’d written her something funny. Her reply said, “ROTFLMAO,” and was adorned with a keyboard version of a happy face, like this :).

Hm. Putting a period at the end of that sentence makes it look like my happy face has a beauty mark. Or a pimple. I suppose that’s why people who use them, don’t use proper punctuation.

I’m sure anyone reading things online is familiar with the punctuation faces people like to put in their e-mails and text messages. They look like this

Happy face :)

Frownie face :(

Wink ;)

Surprise :o

Disgust :p

There are other, more intricate ones, but it took me forever to put those together and I won’t try the elaborate ones. You can call them emoticons if you want, but giving them names doesn’t change the fact that they’re pieces of punctuation, used badly. And, that you have to turn your head sideways to view them as they’re meant to be viewed. And that, even after you turn your head sideways, you sometimes can’t figure out what they’re meant to convey.

I never use them. I like traditional punctuation, like this. Or this? Once in a great while, even this! If I want to let someone know I’m happy, I say I’m happy (usually with a “because” behind it). Or I write that I’m sad, angry, surprised disgusted. If I want to convey a wink via e-mail or text message—well, I’ve never wanted to, and don’t foresee it happening. But if I ever do, I’ll find a way to do it with words. Properly punctuated words.

Then there are the acronyms. ROTFLMAO is “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off.” Honestly, it was easier to type the phrase than to peck out the acronym while I considered the words the letters stand for.

I constantly receive messages from friends and acquaintances containing ROTFLMAO, along with LOL, IMO or IMHO, BTW, AAMOF and @TEOTD. Those last ones mean “laughing out loud,” “in my opinion” or “in my humble opinion,” “by the way,” “as a matter of fact” and “at the end of the day,” respectively.

On a lot of websites I visit, correspondents refer to their DH, DD, DS and DF a lot. Meaning their dear husband, daughter, son or friend.

Between the punctuation faces and the acronyms, you have to be a decrypter to read a knitting blog. Which is a coincidence, because I love cryptograms. I like working them online. But not in my e-mails, or on a knitting blog.

Partly, I think people like using this language because it makes the Internet, or their e-mail, or their text messages, feel like their own—a secret, special place in which they belong, because they know the language. This is a fallacy, because everyone is on the Internet—little kids, pre-teens and teens, young adults, middle aged people, the elderly. We’re all here, in our own secret, special places. And when you run across a punctuation face or acronym you don’t get, you can always go to netlingo.com and look it up.

Partly, people may use it because it saves time. It doesn’t save time for me, because I never use it, but if you said those things all the time, it would be easier to reel out an acronym than to type words.

There’s the problem, for me. Those acronyms are only useful if they’re widely used, so that everyone will know the words they stand for. And using them takes away what is really secret and special about language—the way we each use it.

I had another recent e-mail from a different friend, who wrote that it was raining “like all get out” where she was. That’s a wonderful old phrase that not many people use anymore. When I read it, I could hear my friend’s voice saying it, because that’s how she talks. Those acronyms, overused by so many, sound like no one I know.

IMHO, anyway.

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