Grace Efezokhae: Abbreviations Or An Inability To Spell Correctly?

Gone are the days of sending love letters to loved ones. I remember how in secondary school, the girls had teased all those boys who couldn’t express themselves well in their love letters. You know all those kind of letters filled with “gbagaun” and wrong spellings that we had just be shouting “bullet o” when the yeye letter was read to the class.
See a sample of those “doxology” letters back in the days >>>>>

My dearest,
You are the only sugar in my tea; the only mosquito in my net; if all the trees in the world were trees and all the rivers in the world were ink, I will never stop writing and expressing myself. Even as I am writing, my adrenaline is 100 per cent on the Richter scale, my temperature is rising, the wind vane of my mind is pointing North, South and East at the same time; the mirror in my eyes has only your divine image.

No matter how I love handwritten letters, I just can’t stand guys who send me rubbish pick-up lines from text message books (I know when I see one *winks*). My interest in such person just wanes drastically. It shows the guy is boring as hell and just not creative. I block people like that from my life in a split second.

Now, all these letter writing has been replaced by social media; Yahoo messenger, WhatsApp, twitter, Facebook, SMS and the rest of them. We can’t really detect a guy or babe that speaks and writes good English again with all these abbreviations.
Today’s messages have become so abbreviated that sometimes I just ask myself if it is just me that is old school because sometimes I don’t understand them and I have to start asking for interpretations. And some others, I’ve come to accept them as the norms.

These shortcuts include: Brb- be right back, BUMP- Bring up my post, xoxo- kisses and hugs, IMO- In my opinion, fenk, tnks, tx- thanks, kikikiki- to mean one is laughing, lol- laugh out loud, HML- happy married life, HBD- happy birthday, bday- birthday,xup, awayu- how are you, TYL- Thank you lord, h8- hate, lwkmd- laugh wan kill me die, atm- at the moment, etc.

I am also on the #teamabbreviations but there are some that I just don’t seem to be comfortable with. How will someone say IJN instead of In Jesus Name, Gawd instead of God, TYL instead of Thank You Lord and mawning instead of morning. I just feel some things are better spelt in full. Some people take the response of k or kk as okay annoying. Some people even use “lol” anyhow. Can you imagine this kind of convo:
A: Please, am I chatting with Tayo?
B: I’m sorry. This is Tinuke, lol
A: Apologies
B: lol

Seriously, does lol not mean “laughing out loud” again? You can’t possibly be laughing even half as much as you say you’re laughing. Some others who see “k” as annoying may just reply you with “L” while others see a “K” response to mean that you are not interested in the conversation.

We write for effective communication and as much as possible, I think we should try and understand the person we are communicating with. There ae some times when these abbreviations make the person you are writing to lose even the real message you may be trying to pass across.

Maybe we should just have an abbreviation free week like we had the horn free day in Lagos, so we can even detect those who hide their spelling inadequacies with all these abbreviations. Some people can’t stand someone starting their names in small letters even if it is just in a bbm chat. I personally can’t stand anyone using abbreviations in an official mail or any other form of written formal communication. A man lost his job because he used “u” and “ur” instead of you and your in a mail he sent to other colleagues at work. It could seem very trivial but we have to tread caution on this abbreviations sometimes.

Do you think there is really no big deal in all these abbreviations and I am just making something big out of a very trivial issue?

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | fantasyfactory13