¤ Annoying Abbreviations in English ¤

mteric

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people butcher English words like 'you', 'your', etc. by replacing them with 'u', 'ur'.

Does this really save you that much typing!?

Monsieur-Kiwi · The Quiet Type Joined: 12 Mar 2007 Posts: 14

I agree with you completely. It's also very common in text messages. I don't believe it saves much time when typing. One other thing that bothers me, is that many people change words, just for the sake of changing words. For example, we're all common with they way people change the word 'you' to 'u' and the word 'are' to 'r' for convenience, but why on earth do some people have to change the word 'my' to 'ma', 'the' to 'tha' etc.? Is this just something that occurs only in New Zealand, or is it common in other English-speaking countries as well?

montanadaver

From what I've seen in the US its very common. Most times I believe its used to illicit a reaction. It sets the writer apart from others, whether its good or bad I don't know. It can be quite funny at times.

mteric

I can see that it would be useful to abbreviate as much as you can for text messages, especially since it takes so long to type a message on a cell phone, plus the limited number of characters you can send at once. But in regular emails and forum posts, where these limitations don't exist, abbreviations of this kind are just plain laziness.