Thursday, April 14, 2005

What do you mean, 'it's only an email'?

Hi [my name] jus wnted 2 kno if u cud meet earlier on 2day 'stead of @ 2pm lik we sed. s'thing came up and I hav 2 go out of twn this afternoon. how dus 10am sound? thanks, [her name].

With the veins bulging out in my neck, my eyeballs nearly bursting out of their sockets and an increasingly accelerating heart beat, I considered deleting this email and never speaking to this person again.
What an utter atrocity of an email! How dare we let ourselves sink to this disgusting level of erroneous punctuation and nauseating grammar.
I cannot believe the argument that because it is only an email, it doesn't need to be letter perfect. Is this a logical conclusion? Is it? Just because one is able to communicate with someone else in an instant, just because the way in which one is achieving this communication is electronic is not reason enough that we become derelict and sloppy with our writing.
That form of communication, regardless of the medium, is going to be received, read and assumptions are going to be made about the way the sender thinks - after all, what is an email but a presentation of ones ideas?
And saying the reason we can be tardy in the way we write is because it is so convenient is utter hogwash. Surely, a convenience such as this ought to give us more time to take pride in the way we write, to articulate ourselves well and damnit, to use paragraphs.
No, it is not just an email. It is a reflection of who you are. It is communication. Take pride in the way you write.
And at the very least, be coherent.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

O perfect one...we do not know what we do when we do it...we will try to be more careful
OH please forgive us...!!

found you out....

he he he he
hint --> DD

deadrocketcow said...

No fair. I need to disable this anonymous feature.

Chandra said...

I find it more time consuming to recall all of the shortcuts that tend to "stupid up" my speech than to use proper grammar. I am guilty of LOL and TY, though :(

Anonymous said...

I am bored DD. Put something up here or i might have to start doing the booty shake like beyonce...



--
yellow ducky!!

Pre-Med Student said...

wow, i didn't realise people thought like this anymore.
I'm no longer a minority!!

deadrocketcow said...

It's been a while since I read this post, but this kind of writing still annoys me. Sadly, it's become even more common.