Hello there, internet user!
These days, it's hard to know what the English language even really is anymore, what with Grandpa and his kin yelling at you to "capitalize" the first words of your "sentences" and that "spelling" is "important." Why don't you shut up Grandpa, you old guy you!? You're just some old Grandpa! You don't know how we live! You can't know! My motorcycle is my life, man!
On the other hand, you've got people, mainly girls and their early teens and young men with no friends, the lifeblood of the internet, on all your favorite message boards speaking in some crazy hacker language or entirely with some kind of emoticon morse code (two winky guys, three blushers and two more winky guys is the new SOS, for instance). What do you do? Where's the middle ground?
Well, don't worry, friend. Here are a few ground rules for the ultimate literacy. In the near future, we're thinking of calling it UltLit and marketing it as some sort of energy drink.
(NOTE: For the sake of educating Grandpa and his old Grandpa friends, this guide has been written in the old grammatical style. How do you like that, Grandpa!?!?!?!)
Section 1: Ellipses are the new periods...
Back in the old days, people used to use marks of ellipsis for only a few specific cases. They either signified an incomplete thought, a speaker trailing off or pausing, or maybe that something's been left out of a quote.
But not anymore!
No, now ellipses can be used for just about anything, and should always be used at the end of complete thoughts in any sort of internet discourse. Sentences that previously ended with periods now can and must end with ellipses. For example:
OLD STYLE: I'm going to the store to buy some ice cream.
NEW STYLE: going to the store to buy some ice cream...imho...lol...
Notice some of the changes. We'll get to leaving out subjects (and other previously necessary words) later on. Also, notice the abbreviated "in my humble opinion" and "laughing out loud" at the end. Now, everyone knows what you said is your opinion, as well as the fact that you are constantly laughing. This is an important and completely non-superfluous thing to add to both subjective and factual statements. Why the ellipses? It's fairly obvious. Ostensibly, you're leaving your readers hanging, watiting for you to update them on what's going to happen next since it looks like you have something else to say.
You don't, though.
Section 2: captialization's not what it used to be.
At the beginnings of sentences? Don't need 'em. Proper nouns? Who cares? REALLY ANGRY?!?!?!? Now we're talking.
Talking about capital letters, in fact. I mean, let's face it. Does it really make any difference if you say you're "mark from boulder" or "Mark from Boulder?" Absolutely not. There are probably all kinds of dudes named Mark there anyway. And we all know that there are marks and boulders all over the place. And honestly, nobody really cares who you are anyway.
But what if somebody calls you "gay" or a "noob" or something? That's serious, man. Or worse yet, what if someone calls you out on a factual error in something you wrote? You've got to let them know you mean business. And that means ALL CAPS. Yeah, you've got bold and italic to show emphasis too, but dammit, you're angry. VERY ANGRY. Let's take a look at another example.
OLD STYLE: Actually, I'm pretty sure I was right. I just looked it up on IMDb and The Last Starfighter did come out in 1984.
NEW STYLE: YOUR SO DUMB!!!! LAST STARFIGTHER WAS 84!!!!! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!!!
See how much emphasis the caps add to what you say? The extra exclamation points add a lot too, so keep that in mind.
Also, it's very important to let the person you're addressing know that you are, in fact, Zod and that they indeed need to kneel before you. Most people don't know that.
Section 3: Words not matter.
Nouns, verbs, pronouns -- all that stuff, they don't really matter all that much. You can pretty much leave them out. Complete thoughts are on their way out, trust me on this one.
In addition, you can use lots of words interchangeably. The rule is basically that words that sound alike all mean the same thing. Here's a handy guide for you:
your = you're = ur
its = it's
poll = pole = poal
their = they're = there
sale = sail = sell = sayle
Some people will tell you that those words mean different things, but those people are stupid. Tell them so. They'll probably thank (or think) you for it.
SECTION 4: Abbrev. everything.
One way to avoid the admittedly hairy and time-consuming obligations of spelling and typing is to just shorten every to every other word you type. It doesn't even matter if it's clear what the word is -- your fingers are what's really important, not someone else's understanding of the correspondence. I mean, look at the difference in the number of letters in the following examples:
OLD STYLE: That witticism caused me to laugh aloud with enjoyment!
NEW STYLE: rofl
OLD STYLE: That awkward moment caused me to become uncomfortable.
NEW STYLE: oooh, awk. I'm unc.
OLD STYLE: Did you hear about what happened yesterday? The Supreme Court ruled that local governments can use eminent domain on any property for municipal use.
NEW STYLE: u hear? TSC ruled lgcuedoapfmu!!!
It's just so much simpler that way..
That's it for this portion of the guide. In following sections, we'll take a look at commas and why they need to be used both more and less, the optional punctuation called the question mark and why a huge block of text is better than using paragraphs.
Stay tuned...
