I got into a conversation with someone today that just reminded me how much I despise people that do not take the effort to try and write proper sentences on the Support Forums that I visit. Of course I know that not everyone is born with English as their native language, and I certainly won’t expect everyone to write perfect sentences, but I see more and more people on the forum that use “Text Speak”. Text Speak, for the ones that do not know what this is, is a way of writing words shorter than they actually are or even change that in letters because the would sound the same. For example; “for” would be “4″. This makes sentences like; “Do you have some sugar for me?” into this;  “Do u have sum sugar 4 me?”.

Personally, this makes my eyes bleed. I have to spend an extra few seconds re-reading the sentence to fully understand what the person is trying to say. And it actually took me longer to write in Text Speak than it did to write a proper English sentence. Anyone that is reading this, please consider writing in proper English next time, because it really doesn’t leave a good impression on the people that are helping (or going to help) you. And on the subject of good impressions.

Since that I became a moderator at Geeks to Go! I run into a lot more people that seem to think that putting up an attitude to the people that are helping you, will make them help you faster. This in fact, is a false assumption as it will only decrease your respect with them. If you want to know how to act properly on Technical Forums, I suggest you read; “Survival Guide to Technical Forums” by Joe Hobart. And if you’re done reading that and you didn’t quit halfway through, I suggest you read; “How To Not Get or Give Technical Assistance on Usenet and Web Forums”.

Regards,
Olrik