Google: “how can u” vs. “how can an individual” is not really about grammar

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• I find it atrocious that as a writing teacher you condone such behavior. This phenomenon does NOT just extend to texting. It DOES have a tangible effect on the writing of young people, and that effect is markedly observable. Knowing the rule and not opting to use it doesn't make a valid defense. If you know the rule and how something is spelled and you don't use it, then it's as bad as, if not worse than, simply not knowing any better. I don't buy the time factor. No one's writing a treatise on their phones and the typical text message is already short enough to be communicated in bursts. The time you spend writing correctly in a text or on a phone is NOT that intrusive.

  The number of pre-teens and young teens with iphone 5s and other varieties of smartphones these days is staggering. The day of a numerical keypad is pretty much gone. The day of limited texts and expensive texts are gone. The day of having to watch how many characters you input into your message is gone. Those were all the valid reasons to shorten your phrases, I'll agree. The problem is, it is now a social convention to be lazy. To send out a text that looks like someone with a brain wrote it is, in a lot of circles, considered 'stuck-up' or 'nerdy'. You may not see a fall in your students' writing ability yet, but you will if this devastating trend of 'communicating well means you're a pretentious douchebag' continues. As a teacher, you should understand the impact that these things have on young people. The internet click and subculture is HIGHLY underrated by educators. The sad fact of the world is that they spend far more time here on the internet than they do thinking about your classes, your homework, or the lessons you've taught them. Just because this is becoming a commonplace convention on the internet does not mean it is not detrimental or can not lead to detriment in the future.

• The thing this meme doesn't take into account: the exact same thing happens if you say "How can you."

• watch out, it's the fun police..... this article is akin to explaining a joke, it sucks all the fun out of it..... thanks Dennis

• More important, the typical person who uses a phone to search the Internet on any topic is going to be young, and therefore less likely to have gone to college to learn the kind of formal language that society sees as a marker of class and education

  Interesting. I didn't know you had to go to college to know the difference between "you" and "u"

• I think the use for shortcuts is obsolete because of QWERTY keyboards on phones nowadays. Yes, at one time when you had to press a button 3 or 4 times to get one letter and pay per text, I could see how it was easier for text speak. Now with unlimited text, there is no excuse to want to shorten your text. It's just being lazy now. It saves no time whatsoever.

  • Thanks for your comment. Sadly, I still use an old numeric keypad phone, so what was true about thumb-typing not too many years ago is still true for me, but I'm aware I'm being deliberately retro.

• I'm sorry, but the idea of time being an issue for proper grammar is ridiculous. I'm 26, and I've had a cell phone for ten years. In those ten years, I have never once sent a text containing "u" or shortened a word of any kind. I even make sure that any word that should be capitalized is.

  Maybe that sounds crazy to you, but if it really is that difficult to spell correctly and have proper grammar, further education is needed. I don't want to live in a world where no teenager knows how to spell "definitely" and can't be bothered to type THREE letters instead of one.

  I never went to college, I'm just a smart person. I don't text people that don't type full sentences, or use punctuation. To me, it is a sign of stupidity, and I don't have time for stupidity.

  It's not complicated, people in this world are just lazy and don't care about anything.

  • I guess I fall somewhere in the middle on this. I care a lot less about "u" vs. "you" than I do about "your" vs. "you're", for example. Everyone knows that "u" is short for "you", but I swear, some people do NOT know when to use "you're".

    I think typing "u" is more cultural than anything else. People want to fit in with other people that are like them in some way. And the people I want to fit in with happen to type "you". My mom, on the other hand, has this notion that "u" is the "cool" way to write it, so she does that. Not everyone's motive is laziness nor convenience nor character limits, though it may have started that way. Sometimes, you just want to do what the people you identify with will be the most accepting of.

    Ultimately, language is nothing but a means to communicate. It's only WRONG when what you say is ambiguous or unclear. Nothing is ambiguous or unclear about "u" in place of "you". But just like body language, intonation, etc., your writing style says more than the words you write. You do convey something to your reader based on abbreviations, slang, capitalization, etc., and what you convey all depends on your reader's attitude towards the whole thing. I would never NOT capitalize or look up the spelling of a word I was unsure about in a public Facebook post, for example. But I might if I was just sending an IM to my sister (who I know isn't judging a damn thing I write).

    • And yes, the use of abbreviations has nothing much to do with "grammar," as grammar has to do with the order of phrases within an utterance, and (in writing) the punctuation which helps us identify them. Even most linguists wouldn't have much to say on the subject, and, if they did, they'd probably be indifferent to abbreviations. Seems to be more of a social issue than a competence thing.

• "More important, the typical person who uses a phone to search the Internet on any topic is going to be young, and therefore less likely to have gone to college to learn the kind of formal language that society sees as a marker of class and education."

  If that's the case, then shouldn't you be raising as stink over the fact that "young people" do not know what causes herpes, HIV, aids, chlamydia, mono, mend a broken heart, lose weight fast, get HPV or hepatitis C? That's because it's an absurd argument.

• "First of all, the substitution of “u” for “you” has nothing to do with grammar, it’s just a shortcut often made by people who are typing on phones. Typing “u” for “you” does not affect the function the word plays in the sentence (grammar), though of course the word choice (diction) will affect the reader’s interpretation of the message." is an incorrect statement. Just because "U" is acceptable shorthand when texting doesn't make it grammatically correct in any use, and yes, that is incorrect grammar.

  I will however agree that it's a matter more complicated than grammar.

• I guess I am not the "typical person who uses the Internet on any topic," since I don't consider 49 young. Certainly I am not quite elderly yet, but also couldn't be called "young." And I don't abbreviate from my phone, either. Although I am certainly aware of the abbreviations available and can interpret the slang, it sets my teeth on edge and I would never use it; so much so that when my friend received an email using poor grammar that was apparently from me she texted me to say that she thought I'd been hacked, since she couldn't imagine me sending such a thing. In today's world of full QWERTY keyboards on phones there is no excuse. Back in the dinosaur days when we had to use T9 predictive texting it might have been reasonable.

• I think this is an interesting debate not just from a language-point-of-view, but from an ethical one. What implicit judgments are being made by this picture? I wrote a blog about it, if you are interested - http://sarahpeck.com/2013/02/12/on-grammar-and-google/