Dear John Humphrys,
Just over 8 years ago you wrote a very strong article called ‘I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language’. Technology today is taking over so many young minds and influencing us young people in so many ways. I really agree with your point on how texting is wrecking our language, but the English language has seen changes many times down the historical timeline.
John, the first time I started reading your article I disagreed straight away after just one glance at the title of the article. I believed that the title was too extreme since texting is not wrecking our language. But I do agree with you on the whole where you describe how you are annoyed by emoticons. There is one part in this article where you say ‘It has now reached the stage where my computer will not allow me to type a colon, dash and bracket without automatically turning it into a picture of a smiling face’. I fully agree with you here, because I find that emoticons are completely unnecessary and nearly all the time there is no point of emoticons unless they are being used as a joke or in an ironic way. Perhaps emoticons can be used nowadays to alter the mood of a conversation, for example if someone says hi after an argument with a laughing face then the person receiving the text would feel that they are back on good terms.
John Humphrys, in one part in your article you say ‘But it’s rare to open a dictionary without being diverted somewhere else.’ I believe this means that people might look inside a dictionary to find out about new words and flip through pages like they’re reading an actual book. Dictionaries are mostly used to find out the meanings of words and used for us people to get our vocabulary to become better. Nowadays we don’t use the dictionary, we usually just type the word on Google and it will come up with a definition. Most people don’t even find the word they are looking for they just use autocorrect without knowing the meaning of most word. Online dictionaries give you a wider range of words and is easier to use on phones, tablets, computers and laptops. Searching the meanings of words on Google is more quick and instant, more up to date and uses more slang. Searching words up on Google gives you a two in one because it comes with the definition of the word and different synonyms to do with the word. There is also access for over 1000 languages to all words which the dictionaries don’t have. So the point that is being put out is that phones could be better than using actual dictionaries.
I still do agree that text messaging is destroying out language but im just not 100% on board with some of the points that you are putting out there Mr humphrys. Texting is destroying our language and we need to find a way to change it.
yours sincerely , Aaron Akarolo
React!