Texting has long been lamented as the downfall of the written word, "penmanship for illiterates," one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL. Texting properly isn’t writing at all-it’s actually more akin to spoken language. And it’s a "spoken" language that is getting richer and more complex by the year.
Historically, talking came first; writing is just an artifice that came along later. While talk is largely subconscious and rapid, writing is deliberate and slow. Over time, writers took advantage of this and started crafting sentences such as this one, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "The whole engagement lasted above 12 hours, till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself. "
No one talks like that casually-or should. But it is natural to desire to do so for special occasions. In the old days, we didn’t much write like talking because there was no mechanism to reproduce the speed of conversation. But texting and instant messaging do-and a revolution has begun. It involves the brute mechanics of writing, but in its economy, spontaneity and even vulgarity, texting is actually a new kind of talking. There is a virtual cult of concision and little interest in capitalization or punctuation. The argument that texting is "poor writing" is analogous, then, to one that the Rolling Stones is "bad music" because it doesn’t use violas.
Texting is developing its own kind of grammar. Take LOL. It doesn’t actually mean "laughing out loud" in a literal sense anymore. LOL has evolved into something much subtler and sophisticated and is used even when nothing is remotely amusing. Jocelyn texts "Where have you been" and Annabelle texts back "LOL at the library studying for two hours." LOL signals basic empathy between texters, easing tension and creating a sense of equality. Instead of having a literal meaning, it does something— conveying an attitude—just like the -ed ending conveys past tense rather than "meaning" anything. LOL, of all things, is grammar.
Civilization is fine—people banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use .in actual writing, and there is no evidence that texting is ruining composition skills. Worldwide people speak differently from the way they write, and texting-quick, casual and only intended to be read once—is actually a way of talking with your fingers. According to the text, which of the following statements is true of writing