The best part about Lulu’s tumultuous and yet mercifully brief period of condo-shopping was that her real estate agent, Bruno, writes in what I, as a Minnesota Lady of a Certain Age, would call “Prince-Speak, but is probably more correctly referred to as “he doesn’t know the difference between texting and writing in a professional setting.”
Yes, his E-mails to her are all:
Remember 2 B careful 2 sign in all 3 places on the form I faxed U.
Lulu is shocked. Our boss recently enrolled her in a series of “Communicating With Impact” professional development courses, and so as a result, she is extra shocked. Now, our boss might have been better served enrolling Lulu in a class called “Communicating with Less Impact,” but I digress.
I don’t do a lot of links but I really must direct you to the excellent blog of Maud Newton, who a few weeks ago in turn directed us to a piece by Lee Siegel, who says that E-mail is converting casual conversation into something that passes for writing.
You chat with your fingers, rather than try to organize thoughts into words,” he says, the result being that “soon we won’t expect writing to have irony or different levels of meaning any more than we expect casual conversation to have a meticulously crafted structure. The discipline of arduously thinking your way into words has given way to the indulgence of going on, and on, and on, as a substitute for thinking.
Praise B, chicklets, praise B.