OMG WTF BBQ

Today, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss certain netiquette issues with all of you. At times, I forget that not every human being spends up to ten hours a day sitting in front of their computers, so I promise to only discuss those issues that I see as general enough to apply to most of you. I'll same my commentary on bad
page layouts and indecent code writing for another venue.

So, I will assume that, because you're reading this, you are literate. Furthermore, I will assume that, this being the 21st century, you have access to email. If these assumptions are false, then something has gone horribly wrong with the space-time continuum, and somehow an illiterate is looking at this post in the past. I suppose if it's an illiterate, then there's really no chance of my horribly altering the future a la Back to the Future, so on we go.

There seems to be a misconception in the world that an email, due to its near-instant nature of delivery, is somehow less deserving of attention than its pen-and-paper counterpart. As such, I have seen emails come through with no punctuation, or emails that are written either entirely in capital or lower case letters. I think this comes from our fast-food mentality - if it's fast, we expect that the quality doesn't need to be as good.

Wrong. The fact is that an email is like any other form of correspondence, and deserves the full attention of its creator to ensure grammatical correctness. While I partially enjoy the gradual dumbing down of society, if for no reason other than it makes me look smarter by comparison, this one drives me nuts. I don't know if the advent of email has merely served to display the fact that Americans have forgotten all of the rules of English that they learned in school or if we are truly treating email differently. As an optimist, I will assume the latter, as the former is kind of depressing.

While I'm ranting about email conventions, let's talk about instant messenger speak. I know that when you're tapping away on your mobile phone, or trying to respond to a flame on a message board, you don't want to spend a lot of time typing. Fair enough. That does not mean that it is now acceptable to use these contractions of expression in an email. Put plainly, I don't want to see LOL, TTFN, ROFL, LMFAO, etc. I love LOL cats as much as anybody, but in an email, I want to see actual, English words, all written out.

I am not so staunch in my opinions here that I consider all internet memes off limits. For example, I believe that the typographic smiley has a place in email to indicate that a proceeding statement was meant in jest. I would request, however, that we keep it down to a smiley, :-), a frown, :-(, or a wink, ;-). I think the point where we start adding bow ties, beards, buck teeth and party hats, we have crossed a line.

So there's my little rant for the day. Hopefully I didn't offend anyone. I just don't want to see the English language disappear in a blur of smileys and contractions, and I really don't want my kids growing up thinking that this is how people communicate. I do not want to see "Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow." replaced with "BNF". Just doesn't have the same ring.