The Twitter Tweeting Language

I blogged recently that I was new to Twitter and didn’t really understand the purpose of using it. I have looked into Twitter a bit further and even follow a few people just to see what the hype is about. While reading my tweets, I stumbled into the twitter language barrier. I can make out most of the short cuts used for texting but this tweet had me thrown for a loop.

Our brains usually recognize commonly misspelled words with no problem. Well this tweet had me at a complete loss. I couldn’t for the life of me make out the short cuts or even place letters where I thought they should go to make that three line sentence make sense. Finally, after staring at it for longer than I care to admit, I asked a friend who has been tweeting longer than me, to translate the tweet. She figured it out immediately and gave me a quick lesson on Twitter’s tweeting language. I don’t think I will ever get the hang of it naturally like most people, but with tweeting and unlike texting, you’re allowed fewer words to get your message across so not really worth the trouble of pulling out the thesaurus or dictionary to perfect that message.

Let me give you an example of how bad I am at this. Another friend sent me an email and in the subject it read, “RUN.” I replied “run where.” It took a minute before she replied back and naturally, I thought she was running or telling me to run. Come to find out she was laughing at me and had to get herself together before calling me to explain the message. What she meant to say was “Are you in.” Well, duh! I felt stupid. I wasn’t a texter or tweeter and didn’t know the language. Texting is not my thing either. I text so slow that most times the person texting me will call to ask if I got the text. Well yes, I did, but now the call canceled out my text message.  Have you ever used the auto text feature on a cell phone? What an amazing little feature. Hmm, let it be known I don’t use that anymore either.

We older folks think today’s young folks have nothing to teach us. We are so wrong! When it comes to texting or tweeting be sure to have a teenager or adult at least 25 to 30 years old around so they can translate your text messages or tweets. In my case, I need them not only to translate, but to read it for me; the words on those tiny cell phone screens are impossible to see and bifocals don’t help.