#Thisisatitle
I’m okay with text abbreviations —lol, u, omw, l8tr— but Twitter users have mangled the English language with their excessive use of text abbreviations. As an example: “I dont knw what im doing, maybe ill thnk about it l8tr.”
Twitter is also useless. It’s just a collection of celebrities and egotistical non-celebrities posting what they’re doing every minute of every day. Now, why do I care if you “just 8 a muffin @Lou’s #awesome #delicious #breakfast”? The answer is that I don’t care! Eating a muffin is normal and not noteworthy.
I know that Twitter has a 140 character limit, but is it really that hard to maintain proper grammar? Let’s compare Twitter to regular blogs. Musicians usually have blogs, as do major game companies; I pay more attention to the latter. These generally contain updates with a fair amount of detail about upcoming events. Because these blogs are for public use, as opposed to private text messages, I expect proper grammar. Twitter has flooded the Internet with ungrammatical updates about everything unimportant in the world.
Using vocabulary correctly is just as important as using proper grammar. As I did my vocabulary homework this week, I got to the word shibboleth. My first response was to ask myself, “Is that a real word?” Shibboleth: kind of like a dinglehopper, a fork, as defined by Scuttle in The Little Mermaid. Actually, shibboleth turns out to be a synonym for a catchphrase or slogan. Try using shibboleth on Twitter, and watch the confused replies come rolling in.
Photo Courtesy of Geek in Heels