Boyung.com

If there's one thing about the internet that I absolutely hate, it's netspeak.  "r u there" instead of "Are you there?" or stupid acronyms like ROFL or LOL.  Like anyone in the real world would ever actually say "rolling on the floor laughing" or "laughing out loud."  It was bad enough when this kind of talk was relegated to chat programs, but it has expanded.  I see people using it in forums, including what are supposed to be professional, technical forums.  I see it in use in e-mails, causing me to have to decypher these strange glyphs when I get an e-mail from family or friends.  The worst thing, however, is that netspeak is getting so bad that these kids are using it in their schoolwork, when they write papers.  There was an article a couple of years ago on CNN where a teacher gave a high school student a failing grade on an English paper because she couldn't decypher what was written.  This student thought it was okay to use netspeak on an English paper, of all things!  The student apparently had the nerve to argue about the grade.  Absolutely obnoxious. 

At first, I thought this was an isolated incident, but it's apparently gotten out of hand.  I have personally seen resumes coming in for programming positions where the person used netspeak.  Those resumes instantly went onto the "do not even consider" pile, along with the other people that can't take the time to have their resumes proofread.  On a very quick search for the word 'netspeak' on Google, two results on the first page were both about the problem of young people using netspeak in completely inappropriate environments.  Check these out:

http://www.indignation.org/please-im-begging-you-drop-the-net-speak

http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2007-05/2007-05-08-voa2.cfm

It's not even just a problem in the US, which the second link above shows.  Everyone out there, stop with the netspeak.  If you are chatting online or texting on your phones, I'll live with that, but anything else, where there's no real reason for shorthand like this, don't use it.  Is it really that difficult to type out the full word or sentence?  I don't think it is.  Most people that use netspeak have grown up with computers their entire lives.  I would venture a guess that a decent percentage of you can type better than I do.  If that's the case, it probably takes no more than a second or two to type the whole word instead of the alternative.  You won't miss that second, because, in all likelihood, you would waste that second on something else less important anyways.  Now, I know that I've said this before when talking about other topics, but I'll say it again:  Using netspeak makes you look dumber than you are.  If you want to impress someone, use the correct words, grammar, and spelling.  If you want them to think you are an idiot, use netspeak.