A Word on the Words: The R U OK text speak mob are taking over

Steve's taking on txt spk in this week's A Word on the Words

I AM a judgmental person. I sometimes make up my mind about a person on the grounds of their vocabulary.

I have a sliding scale of respect.

On the lowest rung are people who text each other to ask RUOK (with no question mark). And get the answer b U2 (again, no question mark).

I’m rarely impressed by this sort of person.

At the other end of the scale are boffins who study linguistics and make learned observations on the nuances of the English phonology system. It might be suggested that, unless this is your job, you’re taking it a bit far.

In the middle are normal people who’d be embarrassed if they were unable to spell common words, pay attention to punctuation and know when sentence construction is good without necessarily being able to detail the grammatical formula.

I’m in the middle grouping. I’m not a professor, but I can spell “fuchsia” and know that discreet and discrete are different words.

The problem is that the RUOK mob are taking over the asylum – their numbers seem to be growing.

Last week I was sent a photo of a car park sign, a real one, saying: “Illegally parked cars will be toad”.

I couldn’t find it in myself to b.