To a certain degree, English can never be completely bound by rules and vocabulary lists. It’s a living language, evolving with time, bringing in new terms, seeing old terms, old rules changing. Those linguistic fuddy-duddies (like myself) may cavil at some of the changes, but, damn, better that we grow than that we stagnate, and better that we accept new things than that we become a laughing-stock, like the French Academy.<\/p>\n
Still, I’m not sure that using SMS abbreviations should be, ah, acceptible in school assignments<\/a>.<\/p>\n The teenager’s essay which caused the problem began: Uh … no.<\/p>\n (via BoingBoing<\/a>) (Title with apology to Adam<\/a>.)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To a certain degree, English can never be completely bound by rules and vocabulary lists. It’s a living language, evolving with time, bringing in new terms, seeing old terms, old…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":38599,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/31\/words-with-enemies.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":0},"title":"Words with Enemies","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 31-Aug-13 1:50pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So I'm a rules-abiding kind of guy. And I'm a big believer in the richness of the language and in the power of proper grammar and all that.But for some reason, of late, I've been finding myself defending the idea that languages are dynamic, and that spelling, grammar, meaning, exist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7738,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/24\/wordstructure_m.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":1},"title":"Words(tructure) Mean Things","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Aug-05 3:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I only encountered sentence diagrams once in my life, in the 8th grade, where my English teacher used them drawing on old books she'd recovered from the closets of the...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23700,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/13\/sex-before-marriage.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":2},"title":"Sex Before Marriage","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 13-Nov-11 11:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\"In my opinion, our obsessive focus on virginity and sexual purity doesn\u2019t serve anyone. Losing one\u2019s virginity is not an event; it\u2019s a process. Similarly, weddings are events, and signing your marriage license is an event, but marriages are not events. They are processes.\"To my mind, the only key factor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43603,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/16\/stephen-fry-on-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":3},"title":"Stephen Fry on Language","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 16-Jul-14 7:19am","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, after posting the video of \"Weird\" Al's \"Word Crimes\" tune, this seems like a contradiction. Very well, I contradict myself; I contain multitudes.I've actually gotten a lot less pedantic (no, really) over language the past several years, perhaps with the perspective of decades of watchng language change and various\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128300,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/13\/senate-majority-considers-weakening-the-minority-filibuster-again.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":4},"title":"Senate Majority considers weakening the Minority filibuster (again)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Oct-15 7:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So all those GOP Senators who were so adamant that the filibuster was the critical tool to maintain civility, order, and to prevent radical law-passage by a tyrannical majority -- back when they were the minority in the Senate -- are now beginning to wonder if they should chip away\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5088,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/04\/words_and_gramm.html","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":5},"title":"Words (and grammar) mean things","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Nov-03 8:12am","format":false,"excerpt":"Try your luck with Richard Roth's Hundred Most Common Errors in (American) English usage. I got a 71\/100, which should tell you something. (You do have to keep your own...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 : kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.” <\/i>
\nIn translation:
\n“My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It’s a great place.”<\/i><\/p>\n