When I came across this poster for a new Hindi movie, the title of the movie confused me. Now I know that ‘Luv’ is clearly misspelt, but ‘Storys’ got me thinking. It took me over a minute to clarify my doubt. This brings me to the point - what were the producers/directors thinking when the named this movie? Is normal, correctly spelt English just not cool enough? Or were they having a space crunch trying to fit in all the words in 160 characters? This SMSing of English leaves me baffled as it just not stops here but has percolated into our schools and offices.
We all know about email signatures – the “Thanks & Regards” ones which no one really means but writes anyways. It is just standard practice. But there is a senior manager in my office who abbreviates ‘Regards’ with just ‘R’. Now if you don’t have the courtesy to even type out the entire word, then why insult the recipient of your mail with that letter ‘R’. It’s like saying “Oh! I don’t really regard you but I am going to make you feel like an insect and show my superiority by just typing ‘R’”. Come on; use your brain or even that facility in your email program that automatically inserts the signature.
Apparently SMS is a very scientific language. Wikipedia says,
The reader must interpret the abbreviated words depending on the context in which it is used, as there are many examples of words or phrases which use the same abbreviations (e.g., lol could mean laugh out loud or lots of love, and cryn could mean crayon or cryin(g)). So if someone says ttyl, lol they probably mean talk to you later, lots of love not talk to you later, laugh out loud, and if someone says omg, lol they probably mean oh my god, laugh out loud not oh my god, lots of love.
Imho, sms is fml. Lol.
Go figure!
Nice article :)
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