As young adults we certainly used abbreviations and cryptic phrases. But MC and BC did not stand for the master of ceremonies and the era before Christ. They stood for something else which, if said in full, would certainly have made our mothers make us rinse our mouths with soap. Once you have tasted soap, you would not want to taste it ever again.
Later, when we became parents and our kids were young, many of us went to the other extreme. Instead of using abbreviations, we started spelling out key words: i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m, c-h-i-p-s, m-a-r-k-e-t, g-o-i-n-g-o-u-t. I really do not know how effective it was, because our three-year-old brat started demanding tee oh ef ef ee ee instead of a toffee! By the age of five, she was winning all the spelling contests in school, and my wife and I were left wondering whether we had been able to fool her when we said b-e-d-r-o-o-m.
Now, because of the brats of this brat of ours, my wife and I are having to relearn the use of letters and words. The grandbrats can spare no time to talk, but can spend enormous amounts of time typing on their cell phones with two thumbs. I am all thumbs of a different kind, and I painstakingly tap out my reply with one index finger, using the special technique which I call ‘seek-and-kill’ typing.
Text messages in place of polite phone calls give rise to additional problems. Even for a simple ‘Hw ru?’ from my granddaughter, I need an interpreter. When I deciphered the greeting (with some help), I responded in the only way I know how: “By the grace of God, I am well and do not have much to complain about. I trust you, too, are keeping well.”
Her reply made no sense at all. ‘ROFL’ spells no word that I know of. When my kind interpreter expanded it to ‘Rolling on the Floor, Laughing!’ I was more perplexed. What was there to laugh about? I asked my granddaughter as much. The reply “OMG” also did not enlighten me.
BION, in my youth we always used full words—full, as in full—meaning the full form of the word and with its correct spelling. We certainly used some abbreviations that had devious origins in Latin or Greek and often had a period as an inseparable component: viz., et al., etc. Some even had two periods: for e.g. e.g., a.m., i.e. p.m. We considered it acceptable to use ‘OK’ for a host of situations. Some people maintained that OK was the shortened form of ‘Ol Korrect’, but our teachers never considered it at all correct in written submissions.
FYI, we used LOL to convey ‘Lots of Love’. We never texted CYE because there was no e-mail. If we wanted to express gratitude, we said, “I thank you”. It was acceptable to shorten it to “Thank you!” The still shorter “Thanks” was a stand-offish acknowledgement, when you wanted the other person to clearly understand that while he had done something nice, it was NBD and did not merit the full “Thank you”.
From such elysian heights, I have descended to such shameful depths where I now accept a “Tks” or even a “Tku”. Thanks to the grandbrats, I now accept “U r Osm” as a compliment. I understand that TTYL means my granddaughter will talk to me later, and I reply—ILY. But I cannot reconcile to getting a mere ‘K’ as a substitute for okay in a text message. It makes me wonder how much time the sender saved with this contraction. I have ‘comprmised’ on ‘splling wrds’ with ‘mssing’ vowels and even zany spellings such as gr8, which I never did b4. This combination of letters with digits is against the natural order of things as ordained in the Bk of Gn6. I have compromised on conventional use of verbs, of sentences that have no complement and, wondrously, sometimes not even a subject! But I am yet to get used to that most cardinal of sins—the use of transitive verbs without an object! DGMW, but I do not enjoy and cannot approve. Like that!
I have had to compromise on punctuation marks. Oh, in our time we had so many! Not a single new punctuation mark has been invented since Wren and Martin romped around without diapers. We used punctuation to clarify meaning, organise sentences, and indicate pauses. But the way they are now used (or not used) is a whole new ball game. Asterisks and exclamation marks were never so overburdened! And the innocent period, used to indicate the end of a sentence or thought, is often ignored altogether! A text message with no period at the end keeps me in suspense! I am certain there is more to come! But sometimes nothing.
Emojis have added an intricate dimension for misunderstanding communication. What I initially imagined was a man crying his heart out was actually a person laughing so hard that he was in tears. IDK that the person trying to hold up the sky was saying “Whatevs”. And AFAIK, the two hands seemingly folded in ‘namaste’ were a high five. Confusing, no? So why use symbols and icons that make communication so disruptive when words are available?
TBF, besides TMI, there is just too much emotion conveyed by the newfangled texting methods. Even casual acquaintances send messages with XOXO at the end, which BTW means ‘kisses and hugs’. These days, strangers blow kisses, paste hearts and float cupids ever so casually. Long ago, when we wrote letters, the most emotional phrase a man would ever write was ‘Yours affectionately’. A girl could be excused if she ended her letter “With love”. In our letters, there would never ever be an X, let alone an XOXO. To a man, X meant an adult movie and, to the more discerning, XO meant a finer class of cognac. A girl rarely, but never casually, appended an X to a dear one. A bold girl might indeed put her lips to paper, leaving an ever so faint impression of a kiss, but only if she wanted to convey everlasting commitment.
IMHO, by writing less we sometimes say things we never intended and sometimes we fail in saying what we want to, notwithstanding the whole lot of smileys and frownies at our command. Maybe Daphne du Maurier, George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte could still teach us a thing or two about spelling and writing. Their words, carefully chosen and gracefully arranged, carried weight and clarity that no string of abbreviations or emojis can match, IYKWIM. BFN.
K.C. Verma is former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com