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Okay so I am working on my last research paper of the year and I want you guys to help. All you have to do is vote and answer the question and you will be helping me tons. Because my teacher wants me to do surveys and such but I think this would be easier. :]

So here is the question. "When you get a message from someone, whether it be an e-mail, text or letter, and the person is obsessed with abbreviations, things like replacing "to" with "2" and other text talk like "lol" does it bother you?

Thanks for participating. :D

Comments will help and you will all get a DED for my next map.

Yes, very. If someone forwards a message saying to pass it on, and has those text abbreviations I fix it up and then pass it on. Especially email.

An online forum seems like a rather biased population. It also seems like the question would be better with a range of options (how much it bothers you) than just yes or no. I don't consider those kinds of messages preferable but I don't know that they bother me.

Yes, they annoy me a lot. And nearly all of my friends uses that kind of text, which is extremely annoying.
I prefer writing it long rather than writing like that.

I agree with maestro.

it is highly annoying. i'll sometimes ignore the person. i myself speak in generally very scientific terms, and pretty much never use colloquialisms.

It depends. I mean, using 2 as "two" or 4 as "for" once in a while isn't too bad. And I think it also depends on the medium. Seeing those kinds of abbreviations in a text message doesn't bother me much, but I prefer email messages to have proper grammar, full sentences etc.

Not at all, no. It seems pretty pretentious to completely disregard what someone has to say just 'cause they're not abiding by the almighty rules of grammar. :/

Spawn of Yanni wrote:pretentious

And all hell just broke loose.

I'd say Yes for emails, No for texts.

God yes. After all, I am ridiculously pretentious.

i dnt fnd it vry annyin, unlss som1 uses txt spk in bscicly evry wrd, lke ths.

Man, that took me ages to write, don't see why people don't just write normally...

In my opinion on a forum, email or letter you have unlimited words (well, a hell of a lot anyway) so after thinking about it, i do get annoyed with it. Especially with abreviations, as i usually have to feel awkward because i need to ask what it means....

I would vote yes, but i misunderstood, and didn't read your first post all the way through, so i voted no O.o

oops :P

If you have a full QWERTY keyboard phone and you texted me with "I g2g tomrw 2 th movies" that'll annoy me because that means you're just lazy and don't want to spend the *short* time to type everything out. If you have a phone where 3 letters are under a number, it's different then. That gets tedious IMO.

But generally, I've been around those word so much that they don't bother me anymore. So I say no.

Uh, I hate it.
Besides, isn't it more logical for 2 to be 'too', instead 'to'?
I think that every forum should have a special "Grammar Nazi" group, that would be able to fix any grammatical errors and misspellings. But only that and nothing else.

toasters wrote:It depends. I mean, using 2 as "two" or 4 as "for" once in a while isn't too bad. And I think it also depends on the medium. Seeing those kinds of abbreviations in a text message doesn't bother me much, but I prefer email messages to have proper grammar, full sentences etc.

Same. Another thing that matters to me is punctuation. I can usually decipher a well-spelled paragraph with no periods, but I seriously stall when a text-speak message has no full stops. Also, text speak is more quickly destroyed by typos. Maybe that's because I'm not as used to it (Spanish would be destroyed by typos to me, too), but it's still a factor against it.

Yeah. It pisses me off and makes me want to call the Grammar Police.

I'm with toasters and LV on this one-
If it's in a text, it doesn't bother me, anywhere else it does. Usually because a txt message is two or three sentences long at most, while emails can contain huge paragraphs. So i'm not sure what I should vote :/
eh, *votes yes*

Depends on context. I'm okay with it in texts because the character limit and small screen size actually give you a justification for using abbreviations. If you use it in emails or on forums, where you (typically) have a full-size screen and keyboard, and may be typing several paragraphs, it's annoying.

I'm with the Atz.

Using a scale of 1-5 would yield you better results, spudzalot.

I'm not too particularly concerned when it comes to abbreviations (grammatical correctness would be preferred), but I'll get annoyed when it becomes like deciphering the clues of a cryptic crossword. I'm probably the only one among my friends who actually write text messages in proper English, punctuation and all.

It depends upon the medium. If there is a built-in character limit (twitter, texting, etc.), I understand the use of shortened words. However, on forums and other mediums that do not restrict message length, it annoys me.

Oh definately. Especially ROFL OR LMAO

If I can discern what you're trying to say to me, then I welcome any form of shortening. I always use proper grammar because it is what I type the fastest doing, but I imagine there are lots of my friends who grew up with MSN and probably are weaker typists that are more reflexive to "2" than "to".

And if it ever gets so ridiculous that I can't get it, it becomes funny. So, never annoyed.

As LV said: It depends on the medium. I usually don't care, unless I figure they had the time to write like they would a normal message, like a letter or document. If time isn't a pressure, you should use the language fully. If time is a pressure, do what you must to create meaning from symbols.

maestro wrote:An online forum seems like a rather biased population.

An online forum of our caliber, yes. Go elsewhere, and results will be equally skewed in the opposite direction.

As for the question, duh. I fix Facebook quizzes and notes, and every time I copy/paste lyrics, I spruce those up, and same with texts.

Agree mostly with the admins, except that time constraints are never an issue, and shouldn't ever be for anyone. I can't fathom someone rushing to type "omg u hav 2 heer this - jessi n i wer at da bar, rite? n he got n2 a fite n hes at da hospital now ttyl lol". There's just not ever a situation where someone could actively claim shortened time constraints as a valid excuse.

Now, Slaps brings up a good point - if someone's a weaker typist, I generally forgive. But insofar as community goes, I think everyone amalgamates pretty easily into the type of typing we're all used to. Insofar as texts? Of course, there's a line constraint, and sometimes, even I have to shorten some shit off at the end. Mostly 'cause I'm a verbose motherfucker.

maestro wrote:I don't consider those kinds of messages preferable but I don't know that they bother me.

Yes, I wouldn't use the verb "bother" either. Maybe "annoy to death"?