Language, then, like everything else, gradually transforms itself over the centuries. There is nothing surprising in this. In a world where humans grow old, tadpoles change into frogs, and milk turns into cheese, it would be strange if language alone remained unaltered.
– Jean Atchison, Language Change: Progress or Decay?, p. 4
Many communities have been hit by the plague of idiocy that runs rampant through the pixellated streets of the metaverse. Avatars mangle their speech, and rationalize with claims that it ‘saves time’. Perhaps it does, and one might save a half-second or more. However, these assessments fail to account for the several seconds (or more) that the reader must take to decipher this garbage. The practice of (ab)using netspeak is tremendously selfish.
Assume that one hundred people will read a decent post (in reality it will likely be read by many times this, but conservative estimates make for better debates).
Someone having minor experience with keyboards can reach 20 words per minute, an average typist reaches about 30 to 45 (usually the least required for dispatch positions and other typing jobs), while advanced typists work at speeds above 60. 1
This means that an inexperienced typist can enter roughly one word every three seconds, an average typist one word every two to 1.3 seconds, and an experienced typist can enter upwards of one word per second.
If the poster reduces their keystrokes per post by 15% by using netspeak (‘txt-tlk’) and an average post is 300 characters, or 60 words long (a generous estimate), 45 keystrokes, or 7 words saved. This translates to the following time savings, based on the skill of the typist:
- Inexperienced, 21 seconds.
- Average, 9.1-14 seconds.
- Experienced, less than 7 seconds.
Educated adults read at 200-350 WPM, at best 400 WPM for full comprehension.
What impact does netspeak have on reading comprehension? It is hard to say, but if it takes about one minute for the average adept reader to read an average post, and we postulate that it requires an extra five seconds of time to decipher this mangled syntax, ten readers will consume fifty seconds of time, and one hundred will consume five hundred seconds of otherwise productive time deciphering the post.
- For an inexperienced typist, readers cumulatively waste 23.8 times more time deciphering than the typist saves.
- For an average typist, readers waste 35.7 to 54.9 times the typist’s savings.
- For an experienced typist, readers must spend 71.4 times the amount of time the typist saved, deciphering the mangled language.
Please, don’t waste other people’s time.
This writing was originally featured here, on Gaia Online.
Update (2009-09-15): Nathan Hangen‘s “Twitter Validation – My Take” post on Twitip discusses an emerging trend on Twitter that while not directly related to this, reveals a similar lack of consideration for person on the other end.
No related posts.
Also good to keep in mind that folks, me for one, will forego reading your message in full if you make them work to decipher it.
Exactly! f you want people to talk about it, they need to read it first (though some comments in some places would suggest this is not as true as it seems). On the other hand, if you don't care that anyone reads it, why make it public in the first place?
The answer to that may suggest a thing or two about the character of the author.