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Lo ruok? Bin 2 town 2day 2 meet sum m8s wot u up to?

Nufn much, wru? Wot u doin l8tr?

At home, Nufn till the wknd tbh n e way cu 2moro

Need the above translating? Then I guess you’re not ‘down with the kids’. Experts claim that using this abbreviated texting style can actually help the development of reading and writing skills. Research has shown that children who use ‘textism’ will also have less difficulty regarding spelling skills. A bit of a head scratcher really seeing how none of the above text is anything like the English language. The study was carried out on 8-12 year-olds over the space of a year. Older children appeared to use more abbreviations which require more sophisticated literary skills – again hard to believe.

The research was carried out by Dr Clare Wood of Coventry University on behalf of the British Academy “We were surprised to learn that not only was the association strong, but that textism use was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children,”

So what is this Phonological Awareness; ‘Phonological awareness refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound structure, or phonological structure, of a spoken word. It includes the ability to auditorily distinguish units of speech, such as a word’s syllables and a syllable’s individual phonemes.’ – Phew! Thanks Wiki…

Join me on a little flight of fancy. So you manage to break out of prison, evade capture from the police and go virtually unnoticed for quite some time, would you think yourself lucky and keep your head down? Maybe head somewhere remote for a while to allow things to cool off? Or would you plaster yourself all over one of the biggest social networking sites on the web? Well I guess it comes down to; what would the smart guy do? Surely not the latter…

You’d think not but Craig Lynch seems to actually be enjoying taunting the police. ‘You’ll have a laugh with me, but it will end in tears. It always does.” As his Facebook profile describes. Along with other comments such as: “Just nearly wrote my motor off again, ice everywhere I went round the corner and ended up halfway on someone’s driveway!!”, “Sticking the sunbed on as an extra heater . . . felt like the Caribbean in the bedroom ha ha” and one of my personal favourites “Enjoying a 12lb venison steak mmm roasted veg and chips, bangin meal” (although I feel he may mean a 12oz as 12lb is like eating your own thigh) well as long as things aren’t too uncomfortable for you Craig.

Craig Lynch is an escaped burglar doing a 7 year stretch (which, apparently he was almost at the end of) in Hollesley Bay open prison until he escaped in September last year. Since then he has enjoyed freedom and has openly bragged about various different things he’s been up to. Making himself famous is going to cut his winter holiday short I feel and give him a somewhat longer visit At Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

Social networking supremo Facebook is under fire this week for increasing the divorce rate all over the world. “I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook.” Stated Mark Keenan, MD of Divorce Online. I’m assuming the temptation to cheat due to meeting old flames or an even new and possibly more interesting person is rife in the social networking community. Personally I use it to keep in touch with friends not cruise for a partner.

350 million people use Facebook so I guess the odds of re-kindling old ties are quite strong. Does this suggest an increase in boredom? Why are these people not injecting some extra pizazz into their current relationships? Surely if you’re prepared to marry your partner you must see good qualities in them? So is it boredom or just plain laziness? All good question sadly with no answers.

“The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.” Mark Keenan Added. So does this mean it’s the ‘thrill of the chase’ feeling? It’s very puzzling to me. Turn your PC’s off people and go out for a nice meal or get away for the weekend, heck it’s even the season to go for an awesome snowy walk!

So ‘Twitter’ this week has been voted ‘Top English Word of 2009’ closely followed by ‘Obama’ in a poll of the top 15 words. Now ordinarily I wouldn’t get caught up in what I believe to be pointless polls but I find this to be quite a bizarre. These results are provided by the Global Language Monitor; Founded in Silicon Valley in 2003 by Paul J.J. Payack, the GLM describes its role as “expert analysis on language trends and their subsequent impact on politics, culture and business, including the PQ Index/Indicator, analysis of media coverage of major, worldwide events, the rise of Global English and its march to its 1,000,000th word, the Chinglish Phenomenon, Global yoofSpeak, and many others”. In April 2008, GLM moved its headquarters from San Diego to Austin. I’m finding it a little strange that an American company monitors the English language, anyway with the advent of more and more social networking site becoming more popular that visiting friends or even picking up the phone what does this really tell us about where society is heading? Are we becoming more ‘Tech Savvy’ or just plain lazy…

When was the last time you turned your phone off for the day or didn’t go online to send that all important Email, post up a status update on Facebook or Twitter? Been a while eh? In a survey carried out for Virgin Media by the analysts Future Laboratory apparently identified a type of consumer who “switched on to switch off”

A psychologist named James Brook said; “…These people know that, the modern world waits for no one and that taking a break from technology means potentially missing out…”

Hhmmm I thought sounds a little fantastic but then when you actually think about it, he’s got a point. Like I said when was the last time you actually turned your phone off? What with the advent of aeroplane mode and now being able to put your phone on silent why would you turn it off? If you come out of the cinema or step off a plane for most of us the first thing we do is check if we have any texts or Emails.

The same can be said about the internet. With social networking growing by the day it was a natural progression to integrate them into phones, Bebo on the move or MySpace on the train without need of a laptop, do we just love to chat or is it a compulsion? I’m sure there are lots of us who prefer to send 20 txt messages as opposed to just calling and chatting for a while, it’s possibly even cheaper to call after all if you work it out most texts are 10p so if you send 20 that’s £2 and it’s also 10p a minute average to call so you could have a 20 min chat. I know kids who live next door to each other but still prefer to sit at home on MSN chatting to each other. So should the question be does it cause anxiety not being able to use these social portals or would it suggest that we’re actually becoming less social because we think a short Email is a good way to communicate once a week?

“…As many as 85 per cent of full-time mothers always have the internet turned on at home, while a third of people said they no longer felt any sense of guilt about always being “connected” either by having their mobile phone or computer turned on…”

Now this is an interesting statement. Potentially 85% of full time mothers continually have the internet on? What are they doing? Does this suggest that the internet gives the majority of single mums a gateway to a social life in the day?

James Brook continues; “…At any time we might miss an important email or a phone call, an old friend may try to get in touch via Facebook or breaking news may come in. If they feel that they cannot keep up with these things because they are not connected, it will naturally have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing and peace of mind…” – we sure do live in interesting times…