Re: punctuation [OT]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:02:45 +0000, Tony van der Hoff wrote:

Yr lgc, tkn 2 t's cnclsn wld rndr vwls bslt.

Not at all. While vowels are, for the most part, quite unnecessary - and
some scripts omit most of them, e.g., Persian - they are required in
English to aid readability. So far, anyway. It's possible that they will
disappear eventually - and it won't really be any loss. After all,
English spelling isn't exactly phonetic, is it?

Persian works quite adequately with no written indication of most vowel
sounds - and, although it's one of the very few languages i've come
across that's not written phonetically, it's no less easy to read than
English.

After all, as teenagers
can ably demonstrate, communication is perfectly possible without them.

It certainly is. But only when you're used to that script - which the
majority of the reading population isn't.

However, like abandoning commas, semi-colons, and colons, it makes for
an ugly mess.

Not at all. Neither the speedwriting-like script people use for SMS
messages, nor English written without semi-colons or colons is an ugly
mess. Standard English spelling is an ugly mess though! ;-)

There must be a difference in using language for pure communication, in
which case go for the stripped-bare, but highly-efficient, texting
language, and the use of language for pure enjoyment, in which case
well-constructed, slightly flowery, sentences are infinitely preferable.

There *is* a difference. But - unless you only want what you write to be
readable by a tiny minority - it doesn't make any sense to use obsolete
linguistic forms.

Personally, when presented with a text-style message, I'm less inclined
to read it than a properly composed sentence. How's that aid
communication?

Nobody said it was. But your prejudice in that area could be your loss
one day - if someone sends you an important message in SMS script! ;-)
.

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