A fall from grace

I once considered myself a writer, with artistry at the tip of my pen and real ink on my fingertips. Sentences were carefully constructed. Words were expertly chosen, built on solid foundations of active verbs. Adjectives embellished the nouns, sparingly, and conveyed tone.

However, somewhere over the years, the peers of the ten-year-old became my teachers. From the instantaneous nature of chat rooms, texts and Facebook, a new language emerged. If Standard English was a literature major with a notebook full of prose, Textspeak was her ugly tween sister. Textspeak mocked the sophisticated manner in which Standard English expressed herself, and criticised her age. She chewed gum, loudly, and insisted that popular music was complex (innovative, even). Standard English disapproved, but Textspeak indulged in her own accessibility – in the simple fact that the people craved her. In Textspeak’s world, grammar was ‘nerdy’ and barely a skill; immediately, I disguised my love for it.

Textspeak laughed in the face of punctuation and its role in the basic structure of a sentence. She strung endless words together without regard for periods, capitalisation or apostrophes. I struggled to hit enter without, at the very least, assuring that my contractions weren’t threatening to become pronouns.

Correctly spelled words were more infrequent still. Now, to be fair to her, this was not all Textspeak’s doing. The Americanisms that were planted within AutoCorrect systems across technologies budded in our minds and choked Standard English in our throats.

Standard English didn’t appreciate Textspeak’s attitude. Her complete lack of tone was easily misconstrued, breathing a stale air of sarcasm. The people praised her: they could now speak as simply as they felt.

The baby-boomers mourned Standard English’s fall from grace, while those born in the new century idolised the new age.

I will not stand idly by while Standard English suffers at my feet. I refuse to believe that Textspeak is the supreme deity. If employing correct grammar is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

Stephanie Payet is a travel fiend who lives with her heart on her sleeve and her nose in a book. She is forever eating, and often finds herself struggling to be taken seriously while giving relationship advice from an attempted yoga pose.