An open letter to anyone who sends 'txt' emails
Posted on
Thank you for your correspondence. I appreciate the amount of thought and effort that must have gone into it. Whenever I have tried to imitate 'txt speak' in the past is has taken far longer to type what I was trying to say than had I simply typed it in English. Your efforts, therefore, must have taken you ages. I'm particularly grateful that you managed to remove almost all of those pesky vowels. They make it far too easy to read, after all, and I do like a challenge.
You will have to forgive me if it takes longer than normal to reply. It always takes me a while to translate emails such as this into something I can understand. I'm glad that you feel the need to keep sending me these puzzles to solve. You have no idea how much I enjoy trying to decipher a message that looks like a small child has written it by throwing marbles at a keyboard. Other people just send me messages I can understand on the first attempt. It takes a lot of the fun out of it.
When I was younger, I once put my keyboard on the floor and tried to get my cat to walk on it to see if he would type anything useful. I hadn't expected the complete works of Shakespeare, but he'd been around people for a long time and I figured there was a chance he'd picked up some of the lingo. He was reluctant at first. There was, after all, plenty of carpet around the keyboard to walk on and I could understand if the lumpy plastic thing was the less favourable option. There were also no obvious food related incentives and it wasn't comfortable enough to sleep on, as is the way with cats.
Eventually I resorted to picking him up and placing him on the keyboard. He still wasn't keen, but as it turned out my patience was greater than his desire to resist. Seeing an opportunity to be left alone in exchange for a few seconds of compliance, he eventually consented to letting me lower him onto the keys. His back feet stayed there slightly longer than his front ones, resulting in a few stray characters and a long string of square brackets. His front paws, however, managed a more precise and delicate placement before he walked away to lick himself and eventually go to sleep somewhere I couldn't reach him.
After analysing the document on the computer's screen to see what the cat had typed, it turned out to be mostly unintelligible. But for the long string of square brackets and more spaces than the car park at a Milli Vanilli tribute concert, the only thing the other characters had in common was their proximity on the keyboard. There were no obvious messages as it turned out the cat had made no effort to type any.
The reason I mention this anecdote is because of the surprisingly small number of differences between the short passage my now deceased cat typed many years ago and the 'txt speak' emails I sometimes receive. Chief among these differences, I hope, is that in only one case was the author a cat. It is the similarities, however, that stood out. Both authors showed a similar reticence for communicating anything useful or legible to the eventual reader. Furthermore, both parties demonstrated keyboard skills comparable to a blindfolded gymnast trying to perfect a bars routine whilst having a stroke.
I rather enjoy email correspondence. It's no substitute for talking to someone face to face, but as an avid reader and writer, I still get some pleasure from it, especially with the right people. I never emailed my cat. I didn't see the point. He wouldn't have replied. But if he had, I can't help but feel it would have been more legible than 'txt speak'. Think about that next time your fingers pass over the vowel keys. I look forward to hearing from you again. Sort of.