to be appalled at the increase of text speak on Mumsnet?

[AnUnnamedSource]

There seems to be a lot more "ur", "lols", "u" etc than usual.

Am I being unreasonable and old or is it annoying others?

YABU would be U R Bn Unsomething, I can't figure out what unreasonable would be in text speak.

I'm with you, I don't like misspellings due to laziness 'textspeak'. I find it hard to read and grating. Plus it makes MN look ever more like netmums.

I don't consider "lol" to be text speak. It's an acronym like "wwd"....or "ffs".

Those are actually vey Mumsnet. Or should I say MN.

Text speak is mre lke ths....I cnt blve hw unrsnble yre bng.

We need a pedant to give the proper explanations of acroynms, abbreviations and text speak.

Urnbu

perhaps more people are using phones to mumsnet?

I don't like it though.

No, YANBU is not txt spk. It's an acronym. Those have been around for centuries.

There isn't even a need to use txt spk on most mobiles these days, since they have QWERTY keyboards.

I never read posts in txt spk or with lots of spelling errors in the title.

Ignore them, don't answer them, and people will learn. I hope.

It's kind of like another of my pet hates - the word 'hunni' barrrf - just WHY? It has as many letters as 'honey' so it's not a short cut! It's just utterly pukesome and it needs to stop. Now.

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux and Ameslan). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). While popular in recent English, such abbreviations have historical use in English as well as other languages. As a type of word formation process, acronyms and initialisms are viewed as a subtype of blending

Okay:

Acronym: Series of letters, usually typed in upper case, in which the letters represent the first letter of a serious of words. To 100% be an acronym, it has to be able to be spoken like a word. So, if you can say YANBU as, say, yanobo, then it is an acronym.

Abbreviation: as an acronym without the pronunciation requirement.

Txt Spk: a language that developed due to the nature of the phone keypad and the increased usage of text messaging. Due to their only being a limited number of keys to fix 26 alphabetic characters, people developed abbreviations that became standard to save having to type keys over and over again to get the letters they wanted.

iPhone and blackberry have qwerty keyboards but are small and fiddly thus easier and quicker to write in textspeak.

I don't do it or like it but can see why some do.

I don't think YANBU is an acronym, it's an initialism.

'to fit' not 'to fix'

Some people never do any typing other than what they do when they text, so when they do post their first ever post or contribute they use the same speach.

I never use textspeak when I text, but it doesn't bother me when I see it on posts because I'm not that anal and do understand that using a computer/keyboard and posting on forums is new to some.

My text messages are always properly spelt. And punctuated.

Even though I am ancient (and a pedant) I don't mind the odd bit of text speak but am rather daunted by a big block of it with little or no punctuation. It tends to put me off reading.

YANBU.

It makes my eyes bleed trying to work out what the poster is saying and in the end i give up and move on.

I feel the upsurge goes hand in hand with other changes on MN.

I never use text speak and ignore posts on MN that are written in text speak. Mainly because it takes me so long to decipher them.

I haven't noticed that it is more common now that it used to be.

More annoying is lack of punctuation and paragraphs.

I find it irritating. I tend to only use forums where textspeak is explicitly or implicitly 'banned' and I always thought of Mumsnet as a place where it is implicitly unacceptable.

A high level of text speak use tends to suggest certain things about forums I think, I use it as a signal I won't like it!

Perhaps every time we come across a txt spk post we should point out how irritating it is to read and ask the poster to rewrite it.

Or would that be considered a personal attack?

Al0uiseG - almost certainly. Everything is nowadays.

It irritates the crap out of me. I never liked textspeak to start with, but after spending over a year trawling through the case papers on a big gang-related case, the bulk of which were the contents of the teenager gang members' MSN and facebook messages, I actually want to claw my own eyes out when I see it.

Seriously, 10,000 pages of incomptehensible text speak will drive anyone nuts. We had to have a little dictionary for the jury and every now and again the junior prosecutor would get up and announce in his best court voice "For 'kmt' and 'bdem' please insert the phrases 'kiss my teeth' and 'police officers'."

After that I am firmly of the view that the use of textspeak should be an offence carrying life imprisonment.

AIBU to find your post hilarious!

I'm constantly amazed at what people get annoyed/angry about!

i like to think it is restricted to a first post or maybe two, and then the perpetrators catch on.

Oh really...we are expected to conform to a type are we! Rolls eyes...

LOL

I don't use txtspk on my phone, even before I had a qwerty keyboard I spelt every properly and fully.

There are abbreviations and acronyms which are fine. There is text speak which is not.