Save the children: kill webspeak for good!

March 12th 2007 | Tell us what you think [ 0 comments ]

Webspeak iz lyk so cool, it's like ma favrt ting! I don't think...

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I like the internet. I think it's good. However, there isone aspect of online life which irks me more than biscuit crumbs in bed. And noit's not child porn. It's not pop-up ads. It's not email forwards. I'm talking about...web speak, or leetspeak, or more annoyingly '13375p34k'.

Ifind web speak offensive and repulsive. I hear manyjournalists refer to themselves as 'wordsmiths', and I suppose that iswhat some of them are. So to see millions of bratty childrenbastardising theEnglish language with purile abbreviations is possibly the mostretch-worthy annoyance imaginable.

Let me give an example, the above paragraphs might bewritten on a kiddies chat page as:

"Listen lyk innit coz alvo I lyk da net I rly h8 it wen ppltalk lyk nrmal innit. Don't u just h8 it wen sad l0sers rite on da web usinfull words insted of usin easier c00l words like wiv, da, and yo. I find normalwords even more annoyin dan kiddy porn innit lyk coz their [sic] so sad innit.

Many sad journo l0sers fink its c00l to use full words but i dnt no y lykI fink its beta 2 just use web spk innit. Plus I iz lyk so WKD so I must bcool."

And that's not all that I find hideously irritating. What iswith the excessive use acronyms like 'LOL' and 'ROFL'? When people use thosephrases, are they actually laughing out loud, or rolling in the mud laughing?I very much doubt it. Maybe it shouldn't irritate me as much, but it really does rile me up a lot.

What's wrong with a 'hehe' or even a 'haha'? I'd take a cheeky 'hoho' over a LOL any day. I was stunnedto silence the other day when I heard a person on the street using LOL as aspoken word. I just couldn't believe it. I almost vomited all over her face. Iwish I had.

We wrote a news story a while ago that said that schools in New Zealand areactually accepting webspeak as a legitimate form of communication in exams. So students who use the language of filthin their history tests will still be able to pass. Are we deliberately tryingto ruin the English language, or is the world going completely bonkers?