Gentry: Internet lingo unacceptable in formal communication
Shorthand has its place, but professionalism required at other times
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
Where have all the capital letters gone? I can’t find them, and I think they may have taken proper punctuation and spelling with them.
I am of the computer generation. I e-mail, text message or IM more than I call. I also type infinitely faster than I can write, even when using a my tiny phone keypad. When typing a message to my friend, I often omit vowels from words and rarely bother with capital letters. Most notably, I use “def.“ instead of “definitely” because I can never remember how to spell it correctly—that last “e” is ridiculously out of place! I am also a fan of ellipses, littering them through my messages in places they have no business being. However, I also know when the above are appropriate and when they are not. I am sad to say that many people, inside and outside of my age group, do not understand these same boundaries of propriety.
I was unpleasantly surprised when I got an e-mail from my new 40-something volunteer coordinator and I noticed that she had not bothered to use any capital letters. Not one, not even at the beginning, not even for her name. This e-mail had gone out to about 15 new volunteers, none of whom had met her before. I sent an e-mail back regarding my interview time, and I received the following reply: “See u then! thx, k.”
Everything I have ever learned about social customs or the English language says that this is not okay. You can’t purposefully misspell words, and you certainly can’t shorten your name to one consonant when speaking to a person you’ve never met before. However, someone somewhere decided that e-mails could have different rules. And that someone was wrong. As e-mails increasingly become a significant form of communication among colleagues and potential employers, the rules must change as well.
E-mails should be thought of just like a letter. They can be formal or informal, but the same rules don’t apply to both. You wouldn’t send a letter to someone you don’t know starting “Hey there!” In the same way, you shouldn’t send an e-mail to a professor you’ve never had starting that way either. I’ve talked to professors who say that the language of the e-mails they receive often influences their decisions regarding the requests. Why would they let someone into their class or write a letter of recommendation for a student if that student can’t even be bothered to run spell check? Also, do not take liberties in an e-mail that you would not feel comfortable doing in person; if you don’t call your professor “James” to his face, don’t open an e-mail so informally.
Students and adults alike must reform their e-mail habits. I’m not saying you have to drag out the old Webster’s, but at least hit the spell check button before you send it off into online oblivion. And if you have forgotten how to type a capital letter, there is a friendly key on your keyboard that I fondly call “Shift.” It can help you out immensely. If it looks like a cat walked across your computer—“wat r u doin?”—don’t send it to someone if you want them to think you’re intelligent.
Gentry is a Kansas City junior in English and pre-medicine.
Discussion
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If you're going to raise the issue of propriety in e-mails, a good point, you ought, at least, to use good grammar. For example: "You can’t purposefully misspell words" should have used "purposely" (purposely and purposefully mean different things). Moreover, you CAN misspell words, but SHOULDN'T. Grammar, grammar, grammar is what it all comes down to.
Anybody else think it's ironic that this article was written by somebody named Gentry?
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