SMS or a MESS!!!

hi wu r u @ ofis v r w8ing 4u s imtng pcm l8r oic

r v mtg 2nite wud b l8 4 prty

Does that sound Cryptic? Weird? Strange? As the technology is breeding over, mobile services and its application has entered day-to-day bustle. Once a luxury has become an acute inevitability. The positive influence is that it is affordable, best means of

communication and contact, messaging service, encompassing range and its shape & size. All is fine until it knocks our door heavily. But, irony is that we use the technology not because of its adequacy. Instead our dimensions are diminishing and degrading with the way we are bestowing it.

As you can see the above conversation, none of the words are complete except “Hi”, and some of them seem to be senseless. Its a cruel truth that SMS-Short Messaging Service is growing from Short to Shorter and Shorter to Shortest. And what are we conceding in all this is a big question. What triggered me to write all this were two scenarios.

a) My tutor during a conversation said an examination answer sheet comprised of some short forms that are used in SMS.

b) After this, I kept watching all the mails I receive and some of the chat sessions I had with my family and friends. If we could provoke further, the results are alarming.

An examination paper with short terms instead of formal, complete answers and our normal day-to-day conversations are no more in complete forms. ‘SMS’ was the term introduced for the mobile services with restricted display. But, what is actually stopping us in using the complete, sensible, flawless and meaningful sentences and words in mails and chat sessions, where we have ample of space for body text. Is it our laziness or eagerness in conveying a message or just a wavy attitude to ignore it! If we could put aside all our reasons and become a bit result oriented we have far reaching adverse consequences. The key aspect is due to unnecessary usage of short forms by which the essence of language is lost.

It’s not only the grammatical mistakes in sentence formation, but over a period of time the word ‘grammar’ is logically ruled out of our dictionaries. Usage of punctuations, parts of speech, our vocabulary in written and spoken language just flies away in a star lit night.

Literary works such as poetry, essays, novels etc lose their prominence. Classical works written by Shakespeare and Wordsworth seems to generate running stars in our brains. Basically, when these short forms are used by younger generations, the impacts are still worse. Children learning ‘English’ literally get confused by different usage patterns. As they get acquainted to slangs, the word ‘thankq’ makes no difference from ‘Thank you’. ‘gud luk’ is as good as ‘Good Luck’. The word ‘luv’ is as sweet as ‘Love’. ‘ez’ is easier than ‘easy’. They land up in a state of confusion when they don’t find meanings or synonyms for ‘wanna’ or ‘gonna’ in a dictionary. So, the one which takes a back seat here is just not only the written language but also the original traditional reading habits, and failing to understand the literary works. The days are not far where we need to have an oxford dictionary beside us to read an English newspaper.

To the one who is still confused with our conversation at start, let us put them to comfort. “Hi, What’s up? Are you at Office? We are waiting for you.”

“Yes, I am in a meeting, please call me later.”

“Oh! I see, are we meeting tonight?”

“Yes, I would be late for the party.”

Think about it, what are we compromising with and does it worth the value of what we are loosing on the other hand.

Disclaimer: This article was penned during 2004 during my US stay and is a very old one which was published 13 years ago on few external sites. Now just publishing the same on my blog.