Living in the digital world

I am bothered by people who uses short-cuts when typing in an SMS. "N" for "and." "U" for "you." The list goes on. In my short stint as a Radioogy resident in training, I was appalled at an entry made by a radiology technician. Instead of putting in "forearm" she actually wrote "4arm." If that's not stupidity I don't know what is.

I was fascinated with an opinion coumn written by Steve Kolowich. Writing for The Bowdoin Orient, he talked about how the "E-" generation are sacrificing quality for quantity which started as omissions of certain conunctions, then disregard for grammar, then finally dropping of letters off of words. People are garbling up their message and come out as incoherent for the sake of being able to send off as many SMS or email as possible. Perhaps taking out some letters in a word means shaving off 5 seconds in typing out a message, and that extra 5 seconds is just enough to close off that multi-milion dollar deal they have been working on for the past 6 months. Then again the extra 5 seconds you spend might do a better job in helping communicate your ideas effectively and keep a convenience from becoming a bad habit. To illustrate the last point, Kolowich mentioned that his teacher sent back a friend's English report because his friend used "u" instead of "you." Ah, yes. The marvel of e-stupidity.

So if you are one of those people who like cutting off conjunctions and dropping letters from words, don't bother sending me an email or SMS. You are just wasting your time and mine. I don't want to have to decipher your stupidity and incoherence.