Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Today, the Post Office would like to inform us on the use and abuse of slang.
Those terribly nice chappies at the Royal Mail have decided to let us cheeky rapscallions know what the proper etiquette is within that “text speak thingy”.
According to their new PDF’s (see below), phenomena such as web browsers, Oyster cards and predictive text have led to such terms as “404” instead of “blonde” for being clueless.
“11” which used to mean “nice pair of legs” (Bingo Call : Legs Eleven) is now being used to signify someone behind the times. (Code 11 on an Oyster card means out of date). (Oyster cards are debit cards used to travel around London.)
“143”? I love you. (The number of letters in each word), and whilst typing “cool” into a predictive text gives “book,” therefore “book” now means cool. Fun can be had by typing in “Want a pint?”.
It does contain some hilarious ideas though:
I.T. Industry
Code 18 : IT people have traditionally used this phrase to refer to a problem which was the fault of the person using the computer. And since the user sits approximately 18 inches from the screen, it became a ‘Code 18’.
I always thought it was PEBKAC (Problem exists between keyboard and chair).
The Etiquette guide also has some wonders:
. Don’t upload inappropriate photos onto social networking websites unless you don’t mind sharing these
images with the rest of the world.
. Don’t use a text message when carrying out a sensitive process such as a disciplinary proceeding
In this increasingly fast paced world, txt spk is far faster to write, due to a large degree of it being vowel removal and idiogrammatic pronunciation. The problem comes when you try to read it, as a Tasmanian research found. 55 students were asked to write and then read back a simple set of messages. Whilst the txt spk version took half the time to write, it took double the time to read.
Perhaps that’s why the meme’s are breaking free of the internet, RL haz plaice 4 thm.
Source : BBC
