1083: Writing Styles
| Writing Styles |
 Title text: I liked the idea, suggested by h00k on bash.org, of a Twitter bot that messages prominent politicians to tell them when they've unnecessarily used sms-speak abbreviations despite having plenty of characters left. |
Explanation
This comic is less about how teenagers write on the internet and more about how politicians write on the internet. The comic shows that a lot of politicians, likely specifically alluding to US Senator Chuck Grassley, use "sms-speak", which involves substituting numbers for letters and shortening phrases to get a longer idea across in less characters. The practice began first with text messages, also known as SMS or Short Message Service which limited messages to 160 characters. Twitter has adopted the 140 character limit since its inception, which allowed any given tweet to be received as a text message with enough room for the user's Twitter handle (15 characters max).
The point of the comic is this, there is no reason for anyone, especially politicians, to use "sms-speak" in tweets unless they are reaching the 140 character limit. Additionally, Ron Paul followers tend to be younger due to his support for the legalization of marijuana.
Neither example given exceeds 60 characters. Indeed, extending the "sms-speak" to logical full character words and punctuation only uses slightly more than half the character limit:
- Ron Paul is the only candidate who offers us a real choice! (59 characters)
- its gettin l8 so ill b here 4 prob 2 more hrs tops (50 characters)
- It is getting late, so I will be here for probably two more hours, tops. (72 characters)
Transcript
If you post: you sound like (This is a chart with the above two labeled columns. The rows will be represented below in the same format)
"Ron Paul is the only candidate who offers us a real choice!": A teenager
"its gettin 18 so ill b here 4 prob 2 more hrs tops": A senator
add a comment! ⋅ add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ 
refresh comments!Discussion
Politicians don't seem to be doing this too much nowadays. Don't know about the other runners, but Obama's tweets are mostly coherent, with just a pile of gibberish hashtags appended on the end. Davidy22 (talk) 10:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- I would love to know your opinion now after four years of Trump, lol! -- The Cat Lady (talk) 13:32, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Additionally politicians may be tempted to use SMS abbreviations in order to come across as younger and aware of youth culture, while their target audience actually doesn't use these abbreviations at all. 83.84.33.170 23:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
There's also a bit of political commentary here, which has so far been skirted over, suggesting that much of the cheerleading for (the highly libertarian) Ron Paul comes from youthful and, by implication, politically naive commentators. 14:15, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Chris C
- But how is that much different from the 2008 election of our current president which had a very youthful and as you said "naive" 63.149.29.1 21:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Robert
- You seem to be missing a noun and a question mark at the end of your comment. I'm guessing your point is "hey meanie, don't just mock Ron Paul supporters (of which you are presumably one) Obama-ites deserve a kicking too as he is a LIAR". Sure. Consider that Obama heavily implied and at other times outright promised a focus on civil rights prior to election and in the early months of his tenure. For usonian voters of all ages who wanted to do the rest of the world a favor and get the west back on track after eight years of Bush's neoconservatism, Obama was the only realistic choice. The fact that he hasn't fully delivered, especially on Guantanamo, is beside the point. Ron Paul would be facing even more opposition, given that he is starkly unwilling to compromise -- but that unemergent forthrightness is part of his appeal to right libertarians. -- Cockhorse (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I tried to fix the issues with the explanation, but would love someone to look over my edits. If I might say, this explanation was a mess before. It might still be, for all I know. Due to this uncertainty, I'm leaving the incomplete tag. 162.158.255.84 05:50, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
I reviewed the explanation and it looks great! I removed the incomplete tag. As an additional suggestion, we may want to add references to xkcds 1414 and 1045, both of which are about how sms and twitter actuwlly produce better writers/writing. I wasn't sure how to do it so I thought I'd leave a note.Bbruzzo (talk) 02:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
I think someone keeps trying to slip an ad into this explanation, can someone (other than user JackHirschfeld) either prove me wrong or do something about that? 141.101.105.151 07:01, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
This reminds me of abbreviating during a game like people just typing "wall" instead of "a wall is coming". Anyone else reminded of that?
