you got a point?

Allow me a moment to take care of a little business. Thank you very much to Krissany for showing me how to link my blog to my Facebook page.  This edition will be the first one I have written since I have been enlightened unto the wily ways of the internet; so hopefully it will work. She's pretty sharp, so I am certain that it will. Now on to the  meat of this post. I know each of you have lost  sleep in anticipation of each post.

A most vile and egregious revolution has occured in our society, and we have all just sat back oblivious to the horror.  Maybe our apathy stems from the slow pace of this foul event, or maybe we have simply lost the energy to battle such evil forces.  I am certain that many small militias have fought valiantly to rebuff the forces that have descended upon us. Heroes have fallen, and maybe even families have been broken during this revolution.  Friends, I implore you to continue to fight the good fight. Stand strong and face this enemy that has dared to bring such disharmony to our homes.  Let us repel the horror that is "text language."

I feel that I must confess to two things before I proceed.  1) I text like a teen-aged girl. I probably send a few thousand texts a month. In fact most of my conversations are via text message. I have never enjoyed talking on the phone, and the advent of text messaging was like a new birth for me.  2) I am aware that my grammatical/punctuation skills have diminished dramatically over the years.  Well, a third confession is that I am less of a strict grammarian and more of a "as long as the person you are communicating with understands you all is ok," kind of person.

In general, I accept the change. Personally, I usually text in complete sentences and whole words. I have not adopted the slang or abbreviated sentences that seem to pervade text messages. I do have an affinity for LOL, and emoticons.  For me the tragedy is when this "language" finds it's way into other forms of writing. I have received resumes with text language, and I know professors/instructors who have received papers from students that appear to have been written on the student's iPhone.  I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to hire someone that cannot take the time to write a proper resume.  Some will argue that I could be passing on the greatest employee I ever had, but to me it just shows a sign of laziness when you can't take the time to use proper grammar while writing your resume. 

Besides having to ask my 12 year old how to interpret an entire page of random letters strung together, I also enjoy the new punctuation.  For the most part, I have observed that punctuation does not exist in text language.  Call Judge Judy, because I am also guilty of not using punctuation when I text.  However, when I do write outside of the world of text messages I do use punctuation.  Although, I do believe that I overuse, the, comma, at times, in, my sentences, IDK.

One of my favorite new punctuation marks is: !!! I really do not know if there is a name for this mark. I know that "..." is an ellipsis.  It was one of my favorite things to use when I was in college.  At this time my sister should probably just skip to the end of this post, and not read the following section.  Just pretend that I have an ellipsis placed in this part.  I was writing a paper in college. It may have been one of my last papers.  Anyway, the professor required us to use a certain number of references for our paper. OMG!!!  I ALWAYS!!! hated that. I felt that if I could write my paper with fewer references, and still make lucid points, then it should not matter. I was finished with the paper, but needed one more reference.  I found a sentence in a particular book that I had not quoted yet, but the middle part of the sentence I wanted to use really did not support my point. In fact, it may have supported the opposite.  (Seriously, skip to the end ... ... ... .  that should get my sister to move forward.)  Well, here comes the ellipsis, buddy, pal, friend to those in desperate need.  (the other thing you should know is that I wrote all of my papers the night before. so the library was not open at midnight the night before my paper was due.)  (to the younger generation, a library was a big old building with a ton of books in it.  Think of it as yesteryear's internet.  To access it you had to drive to the building and enter the doors, then use a search engine called a card catalog. it was manual.) I digress. Soooo, maybe an ellipsis was inserted in place of the section of the sentence that disagreed with my point, and the remainder of the sentence fit perfectly into my paper.  Whew! another A on my paper.

I told you that story to take up some space. (back in the day it was called BS to extend your paper.) Now we are presented with "!!!" what does it mean?   I know that "!" is used to imply strong emotion, so maybe "!!!" means HEY I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, mean it.  Why three exclamation points?  Why not two, or four? Is five right out?  Is there some rule similar to the rules for the Holy Hand Grenade of Anitoch whereby we shall not pass three?   Will my sentence self-destruct should I <gasp> put !!!!! at the end of my sentence? IDK  The pressure and strain of new rules for punctuation is overwhelming.

Maybe "!!!"  is a more severe ellipsis.  Maybe it means "hey I edited the heck out of this quote, and it probably does not even retain its original meaning."  Perhaps, had I been writing that final college paper in today's world I would have used "!!!" to get my last reference in my paper.  That probably would have led to me getting a B on the paper which would have really ticked me off and led to me sending a WTF? email to my professor, and then double secret probation.

THIS IS THE SECTION TO WHICH MY SISTER SHOULD SKIP, OR MAYBE JUST READ TOMORROW'S POST AND FORGET THIS ONE EXISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL

ABT2 B2W
 TTYL!