It’s true. Listening to young ‘un’s speak English words is a stark shock of two things: I’m getting old, and written English isn’t the same as my written English.
I’ve become my parents. They told me they didn’t understand my music. They couldn’t understand the lingo of my generation. What one thing meant to them in their day meant something else in mine. I was hip and new to my people. I was right. They were wrong.
Twenty years ago, I made a ridiculous suggestion to my writer’s group about writing a book in TXT shortcode. It followed a discussion on the “show not tell” approach to writing and on chapters being no longer than four public transport stops. (A study found that many readers were, on average, approximately this far away from their workplaces, and readers liked reading a whole chapter while enroute, and another chapter on the way back home).
They laughed at the ridiculousness of a TXT message-written novel.
Ridiculous? Yes. Impossible? No.
The way language has changed in my brief time on this planet suggests it’ll keep changing after I’m gone. A novel written in TXT shortcode isn’t out of the question. It comes down to time. It’s not a question of if it’ll happen, but when.
Twenty years ago, phone TXTing was different to today’s TXTing. Smartphones didn’t exist. We used a number keypad to make our words. Spellcheck and predictive text didn’t assist us. Each message sent had a text limit, and we needed to be able to spell a sentence to shorten it. (It’s where we got LOL and many others like it.)
Many modern Asian scripts are derived from the long-term evolution of ancient pictograms. They, too, have been changing over the centuries. The greatest reshaping of those characters in recent times has occurred since the typewriter, the word processor, and the mobile phone.
Languages change. That’s a fact. English isn’t excluded.
Will a TXT-styled novel be published in my time?
If phones stayed as they were twenty+ years ago, then it would’ve happened by now. The Smartphone changed that. The TXT message limit has increased, and messaging now offers spellcheck and predictive word suggestions as you type. Condensed phrasing isn’t required anymore.
Unfortunately, these tools also reveal an author’s literacy level. A predictive TXT tool is nice, but only if it’s used. If ignored, it favours commonly misused words over correct ones. Spellcheck offers correctly spelled words. It’s up to the user to see it and decide what’s right.
That’s why I get “Pacifically” instead of “Specifically” or “Them” instead of “Those” from people who should know better, written on phones that would’ve offered them the right word, but were ignored.
But that’s another topic for another time.
–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)
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