The book I'm reading now is told through a variety of genres (diaries, personal and professional emails, journals) and I just find it so interesting how slang words and abbreviations came about. Who was the first person to write "BRB" in, what I'm guessing was, an IM conversation? How long did it take the first person who read LOL to figure out what it meant? And did the first recipient of "b4" think it was some clue to where the treasure trove was hidden on a pirate's map?
And yet, here we are publishing texts with these in them. While it has its time and place (and NOT in an English paper or anything else of any professionalism), I do think it's pretty cool that editors will allow it since it offers a realistic view into how we communicate.
TTYL
Haha! That's kind of interesting to think about. All slang is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that kind of throws me, though, and maybe this means I'm a snob or something, is that an ARC of a book by a prominent author included some texts that had the usual abbreviations. It felt weird to me. On the one hand, it's plausible. On the other hand, it's also needless to shove it into a novel. The woman was 30 something, a published author - I felt the text speak was placed in there for hipness value and not because it needed to be there for the narrative.
Sounds like it makes sense in the book you're reading, though. :)