Hi, Neighbour,
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Oh, yeh? Well, I’m trying to fight that old adage. In Spain, they say: “El loro viejo no aprende a hablar.” An old parrot can’t learn to speak. And in France, they say: “Ce n’est pas a un vieux singe qu’on apprend à faire la grimace.” You can’t teach an old monkey how to make a funny face.
Well, this old dog, parrot, monkey is trying to embrace the modern language of Twitter — more to the point, Twitter acronyms (a.k.a., ‘aliases’, for people, or ‘letters’ instead of the words they represent). Twitter only allows 280 characters per ‘tweet’, so users have to find the shortest and most direct way to say something, e.g., LOL (laugh out loud), BTW (by the way) or IMO (in my opinion). I’ve even heard someone saying/spelling O–M–G, rather than saying the 3, single-syllable words: Oh, My God! These acronyms represent an important part of social conversations, typed out on smartphones or computers. BTW, DYK (Do you know), Canadians check their smartphones, on average, every 10 minutes. If you want to learn some Twitter acronyms, here’s a link.
Which gets me to my next related topic: Plain Language. Have you heard the term? Maybe not, unless you’ve struggled to understand a contract or a legal form, and said to your partner or co-worker, “Can you just tell me what it says, in plain language?” Or someone attempting to read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens’, who sees that one of the first paragraphs in Chapter 1 (89 words) is one sentence! Actually, his words weren’t complicated, but the structure of his sentences was not plain language.
Well, SFU Continuing Studies offers a Certificate Program called: Plain Language. It’s online and it includes 5 required courses plus your choice of 2 of the 4 elective courses, and then a Final Project, which is a 7-week course that’s only offered once a year. How could such a simple idea grow to be an 8-course certificate program? Obviously, it’s a serious matter in modern business, professions or general communications. They’re just responding to a need, in our modern, attention-deficit world.
FYI (For your information):
10% of Canadians have print disabilities;
42% of working-age Canadians have low literacy skills; and
32% of Canadians don’t speak English as a first language.
It’s amazing how our written communication, i.e., wording, structure and document design, has changed. Internet and social media have resulted in fast turnaround times in business and the professions. Plain language makes it easier for readers to scan a document and only read what catches their attention — the most important headings or bullets. With increased speed of communication, comes many more ways of communicating and much more content to read. I have a hard time keeping up with the amount, let alone the language.
NB: I, too, use abbreviations, that aren’t Twitter acronyms. Can you find 4, in this article?
Fiona