First, I will state some advantages and disadvantages of abbreviated language in text messages.
Advantages:
- it saves time
- saves space and thus money
- I can't think of other advantages..
Disadvantages:
- loss of proper spelling and grammar
- loss of punctuation
- loss of language
- annoying
- sometimes hard to read and understand
- --> risk of misunderstandings
- --> might affect children's language use in school
- ...
As the number of my bullet points shows, I am against textspeak. I hardly use abbreviations when writing a text message and I can't stand it when someone sends me a message containing a lot of abbreviations. How does the sender know that the reciever is able to understand the message? Or does the sender not care about that? I just don't like to recieve an abbreviated message because I don't understand all the initials that people use.
In my opinion it is impersonal to shorten all words in a message and it is unnecessary to do so. I can't see the appeal in typing like a first grader and I think textspeak makes people look lazy and uneducated, especially when they defend it by saying that they're not in school, therefore they shouldn't have to care about how to spell language properly. But there is a great chance that textspeak might affect the language use of these people and that they end up using abbreviations in school essays or might even neglect the correct spelling of words. That is also a reason why I don't use textspeak. I want my messages to be readable for everyone and not a jungle of strange symbols.
