I’ve just received an email which caught my curiosity, not because of the content (what was it about again?) but the amount of effort put in to reduce the number of keys pressed.
Notably, “w/” instead of “with” and “j/k” instead of “joke”. Ignoring the fact that if a joke really needs labelling as such it’s almost certainly not worth reading, I’m trying to work out why. The first example reduces three keypresses to one, and the second reduces two to one; but the slash key is so far away that it takes ages to find it. I get the impression that the effort required to shorten the words like so must be much more effort than just letting the fingers think for themselves and write the whole thing in the first place.
Does anyone do this, or know people who do? Could they explain it to me please?
I work with a bunch of programmers - hardcore Bell Labs were there at the birth of UNIX type programmers - and I’ve never met a group of people more devoted to saving a nanosecond than these guys. I think typing slashes - forward and back - for them is as natural as any other letter so using it to save keystrokes makes sense.
Although I don’t know if this has anything to do with the origin of the practice you mention or not.
In my experience, computer types are more likely to use the best English they can to write anything online. It’s a serious, valid, and professional method of communication to them, so often you will find they are the ones that write in their best English in e-mail, on a forum, or even over msn or whatever. If you code all day, you type pretty damn fast anyhow.
The people who tend to use ridiculous internet shorthand tend to be younger people who are trying to type less because they’re not good at it, or those who consider it a ‘throwaway’ medium - executives who write internal e-mails using ‘u’, ‘r’, ‘w/’ and other unbecoming shortenings are apparently pretty common (so I have read, although where I’m none too sure ).
And while I think that trying to type as little as possible is something people adapt to try and get their message out faster when they type frustratingly slow, it turns into a habit which they keep for quite some time. It takes a lot of time for me to adapt to someone who doesn’t bother using full words when typing online. Often the message is still good, just the delivery sucks. (I’m looking at you, GILD :D)
Ah well, it’s an old debate. Best not to argue too much
I think j/k is generally, just kidding, so you save 8 keystrokes which is much better. But I hate people who use junk like that. Especially when they feel the need to do it to every word. Or to shorten it they change the spelling. Thanx - thanks, luv - love, sux - sucks, etc.
Dang, it actaully takes longer to type like that, because you have to figure out ways to abbrviate words more…maybe its just 'cause Im used to typing good.
I’m a computer programmer, and I find it much better to type fully, although I will shorten words like ‘see you’ to ‘cya’, or ‘cyas’ because its a less formal way of breaking a conversation. I also use more abbreviations on msn than on forum posts, but again thats just me.
I think alot of abbreviations stemmed from txt messaging (see?) where it’s not the speed but the number of letters that you use which counts, getting a passage down from two messages to one by adding a few 'u’s, '2’s, '4’s is deffinitely worth the extra 12p my service provider would otherwise have charged, although i agree it can go way too far.
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