To shorten, or not to shorten, that is the question.

Spoiler alert, the answer is to not shorten.  Teenagers “play with words” by taking out letters, adding symbols or numbers, and basically dumbing down one of the most elaborate languages in the world. Any form of grammar or sentence structure is lost to the trivial excuse of saving a few seconds.

There is not a limit on how many characters a person can say. The use of “words” such as “totes,” “awk,” and the one that gives writers everywhere nightmares: “cray” are examples of a horrible trend in modern society: the cutting down of words for the sole reason of being trendy. Shortening words down to monosyllables is pointless. English teachers did not spend hours teaching words to students just to have them cut up into a ridiculous fraction of the word it once was. Leave the words alone and promote the verbal literacy of people everywhere.

Cutting down a few characters in a word or phrase is simply unnecessary. By using acronyms and shortened words that may or may not contain letters and symbols, a leisurely conversation seems more like a painstaking puzzle that should have come with a secret decoder ring. The minuscule amount of time saved by not typing a few characters is made up in excess by the receiver who has been bestowed with the task of trying to understand what has just been sent to them in a language that somewhat resembles English, but could also be a section from The Da Vinci Code.

Those who prefer to use fractions of words instead of the full word argue that using them is “easier” and that it is left over from when flip phones were in use. While typing in shortened words is much easier for people with a flip phone, most teens have a smart phone or a phone with a full keyboard. But, no matter what sort of phone a person has, it does not hinder their ability to give words their entire value. Even if a student is using a phonograph, they can still be bothered to say “crazy,” “awkward” and “totally.”

The fix to this problem is simple: type out words correctly, say the words correctly, do not remove anything from the word and definitely do not add a number or symbol to it to make it “trendy” or “cool,”

Words are spelled a certain way for a reason, so spell them correctly. Make all those English teachers proud.