Maintaining Standards

I had a very chilled out day yesterday. I started it at a leisurely pace and then headed to Oxford Street in the afternoon to do some shopping. I managed to get some new work shoes, a pair of trainers and a couple of tops for work so that was good. There were a lot of very odd people in London yesterday, maybe it was the heat – or perhaps they thought I was odd.

Today I am going to meet up with my sister and nephew. I don’t think my brother in law will be about though. We’re going to try and find some shoes for my nephew. Originally I was going over to my sister’s and we were going to try and get them somewhere near where she lives but apparently dad’s leg infection has to worse and is now oozing something green. So she’s going over to see him and I’ll meet up with her at my parents’ house. Hopefully going over there will go better than when I was there last time.

I was amused by a recent post on Little Red Boat. Let me be clear here. There is no excuse for using ‘text speak’ in work e-mails. If someone sent me a work e-mail that was in ‘text speak’ I would absolutely despair of them. I find it really odd when people send work e-mails that start “Hi [Name]”. “Hi” to start a work e-mail? What is the world coming to? Totally fine in a personal e-mail, not appropriate in a work e-mail - it’s not some banter filled chatty communication. If I was writing a work letter I would never be so informal, so I never quite understand why people think it is ok in a work e-mail. It’s not that I expect an e-mail to start ‘Dear [Name]’ and be that formal, but ‘Hi’ always riles me. There is someone who sends e-mails that say things like "PFA the agenda for the next meeting" and it took me ages to work out what he was trying to say. I may introduce corporal punishment at work.

When I send text messages I always spell words out in full and try and correctly punctuate the message. If I run out of space in a message then I redraft it so I don’t have to use text speak. If people send me texts that use abbreviations then sometimes I can’t even work out what they mean. That could possibly indicate that I am about 200 years old and despairing of the youth of today, but I like to think that I am just trying to maintain standards and I firmly believe that the Daily Mail would support me in this important campaign. If I was a teacher I would probably give lines to any pupil who submitted work or an exam paper that was in text speak. “I will not show my ignorance by failing to use the English language correctly. I instead I will craft beautifully constructed prose to convey my message and bring joy to the reader, like gazing upon a perfect sunset as the sun slips below the horizon”

It’s always good to give them something to aspire to. Enuff sed.