Remember - one of the things that characterizes "language" is its unlimited functionality: it can express an infinite number of things, and thanks to generative grammar, produce infinitely long utterances. Text messaging is only a new orthographic form for communicating short ideas - much the same way semaphore works, or maybe a better analogy would be telegraphs...due to the restrictions of the medium, it abbreviated the kinds of interactions people had within the format, but it certainly did little to how people actually speak. Writing and language are two totally separate activities...look at thousands of years of preliterate language, and the millions of highly articulate, often multi-lingual illiterate people alive today! Don't worry!

Maybe in a informal situation it might become more comon that it alrady is. After all we still have short hand. There are many languages or rather dialects that are not written just spoken, this type of thing (u r gr8) may be just like that, a dialect of the web... after all it is ot 100 years form now that we really will care about- it is after all, acceptable and used, and understood RIGHT NOW. Certianly it is NOT proper, but what is proper about the web?

Just my 2 cents...

peace,

AmberJoy

I share your concern of the modern trend of shortcut vocabulary, but do not lament it. Compare Shakespeare's plays, which were considered low entertainment for the era, to parlance today; today we hold Shakespeare as an affect of high society. So today's Offspring lyrics will be operas in 300 years? It will be interesting, but there will always be those seeking farther and further classical education, looking all the way back to the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Babalonians, and before. l8r!