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Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

I am the only person I know who texts in full, complete sentences and statements, without abbreviating anything. I use all punctuation correctly, as much as I can. It's not a conscious thing, it's just what I do.

I know of almost nobody else who does this. Shorthand is encouraged, acronyms abound, nobody actually gives a shit if you misspell something, punctuation is thrown to the wind with reckless abandon.

I don't see how texting could put an end to illiteracy. If anything, it promotes it.

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Language is fluid and constantly evolving. Literacy[0] shouldn't mean whether you follow some set of punctuation rules at all times, but whether you can infer the meaning and intent of messages, and whether you can compose messages that allow recipients to do the same, both without much effort or discomfort on all sides. Acronyms and punctuation are just tools to this end. If others 'get' what you're trying to say and consider it appropriate language in different contexts relevant to your life (you want the ability to use different language in professional vs personal settings, to actually use established grammatical rules in formal settings,...), then I'd say you're literate. Using emojis, acronyms or writing things like 'Hey u coming?' in appropriate settings doesn't negate that imho. Acronyms are in fact extremely common in professional settings too, and emojis increasingly so, at least in my experience.

Slightly provocative question, given what you've said ("without abbreviating anything"), would you actually spell out the acronym RSVP in a formal invitation? It's very common eg in Britain, it's definitely considered good form, and spelling it out would just cause confusion since it's actually a French term that most people probably wouldn't recognize (répondez, s'il vous plaît). What about i.e. (ita est)? E.g. (exemplum gratum, although some might argue it can also stand for example given)? You might say you just avoid those terms, which is possible, but I have a suspicion that you're just fooling yourself. Since you're on this site, I might also ask whether you always spell out the Domain Name System (DNS) and similar terms? If you did, you'd actually make your messages less understandable to most audiences, detracting from your literacy I'd argue.

[0] My opinion here, I'm not a linguist, so if this clashes with established definitions of literacy, my apologies.

Edit: I actually had a look, and of course you are fooling yourself. According to your comment history, you actually use abbreviations all the time, including ones that are unknown to me (ITAD company, SEE), making whatever point you were trying to make lost on me without research effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35273712#35276691

I actually agree with you on the first point, I was leaning more towards functional literacy. In the sense that yes, we're literate because we can understand what someone means when they say, "sry my b", but I don't understand how OP can expect the widespread adoption of that style of communication to increase one's functionally literate understanding of, say, as mentioned elsewhere in this chain, a court order, a lease you sign with your landlord, or what is actually being said in a news article. That functional bit is, in point of fact, more of what the article is about.

Edit: You took my comment too literally and missed the overall point. I didn't even intend to judge those who don't text like I do, hence my highlighting that it's not a conscious effort on my part. And, yes, I suppose that quite common acronyms are fine - I had hoped that it was obvious that I was referring to less common acronyms, but perhaps failed there (and still may be with this comment, c'est la vie). But thanks for kinda painting me like a grammar snob?

Edit 2: Some other words for clarification, since I guess I'd better be extra careful...

Yeah, it's probably a rather general phenomenon that skills transfer is (unfortunately) much less effective than one might hope. Just like practicing Sudoku solving doesn't do much to increase your overall cognitive abilities or problem solving skills (there are studies on that, didn't care to look them up now), one probably shouldn't expect too much carry-over from chat messages to other reading/writing tasks with different requirements.

> I don't see how texting could put an end to illiteracy. If anything, it promotes it.

Just a guess, people used to be able to get by with a very basic level of literacy, i.e. label recognition. My cousin was this way when he finished school ~20 years ago.

Now you can't get by like that very easily because text based communication is so prevalent. If you have friends they'll be texting you, so you're pretty much forced into a learning situation for sociality, whereas in the past that was only happening at the speech level.

Re the shorthand stuff, (a) you probably just didn't realise how illiterate people were in the past because they couldn't write anything for you to read, so it's a genuine step up. (b) I actually encounter that shorthand less now, and more from adults who grew up with expensive and limited SMS.

Dictation is very common. Emoji heiroglyphics and phonetic spellings as well.

Seems like they can read your message just fine and type back a reply that you can understand.

Literacy attained.

Literacy sufficient to understand the terms of an apartment lease, a car loan, a court order?

Agreed that reading and writing are two different skills.

Thank you for this clarification. :)

It seems they can read and write, but not the English you’re familiar with.

Of course, the question is whether that language is as expressive as ‘old English’.

I would guess it is simpler, but on the other hand, I know almost nothing of that language, and I know for sure it has features I can’t read, such as most expressions made up of multiple emoticons

I would stop being friends with someone if they texted like this. The entirety of my friends, coworkers (when I was working), and family write properly while texting.

I never said I found anything inherently wrong with it, I just observed a difference between myself and others. I imagine you'd be cutting a lot of people out of your life over something so innocuous.

Seems like a bit of an overreaction

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