My masochistic birthday wish list:
- Get staked in the heart by Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Take a punch from Mike Tyson
- Get kicked out of line by the Soup Nazi
- Get a “thumbs-down” from Roger Ebert
I can now cross that last one off my list. The Chicago film critic gave me a big thumbs-down for suggesting that an old guy like me should think twice before using IMHO or LOL. To which Ebert tweeted:
WTF? I’m to [sic] *old* 2 use “LOL?” ROFL @ these ageist SOBS
That review is pretty funny, actually, and I’m proud to have earned it. Who wouldn’t want to be insulted by Don Rickles or struck out by Sandy Koufax?
I have my defenders, of course, including my editor Julie Moos, who responded to Ebert:
@ebertchicago: You can pull off whatever language works for you & your audience: @roypeterclark was saying he couldn’t pull off LOL.
A neutral observer, one William Joshua Lucas (@lucaswj), responded to Ebert: “I’m pretty sure Roy Peter Clark is older than you, so probably not ageism, just fuddyduddyness.”
I corrected him, pointing out that while Ebert was born in 1942, I was a beautiful 1948 baby. Brushing off the insinuation that I write old, I applauded his neologism “fuddyduddyness.” All those D’s in a single word gave me goose bumps.
Why, then, my inhibitions about abbreviations such as LOL?
As I wrote in “The Glamour of Grammar”:
“There are days when I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of capital letters (make that SCL for short). From government documents to text messages, from technical manuals to 140-character tweets, from company brands to love notes, abbreviations rule the day. Even some old abbreviations, such as F.D.R. (for Franklin Delano Roosevelt), have been abbreviated by the strategic dumping of the three periods. I may have grown up in the Age of Aquarius, but I’m growing old in the Age of the Acronym.”
By now, even we geezers can interpret messages such as ROTF from TMI, abbreviations that young texters find passé. When first used in text messages, these abbreviations became a tribal code that bonded friends or geeks but excluded teachers, parents and other authority figures. Some of these abbreviations have ooched their way into common usage and, proving that they are no longer cool, have even been incorporated in the latest revision of the Oxford English Dictionary.
It’s impossible in the Internet Age to think of verbal or written communication without the prolific – perhaps profligate – use of mysterious abbreviations.
In “Wired Style,” author Constance Hale defines these technological terms in her glossary: CD, CDA, CDMA, CD-ROM, CGI, CORE, CPM. And those are just under the letter C. Add another 25 letters and it’s easy to see why any Luddite (or fuddy-duddy) might feel as if entry into this world requires learning a secret code.
Now to the accusation of “ageism.”
You are reading a post written by a man who once sang the first 12 bars of the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” in front of 5,000 stunned high school students gathered for a scholastic journalism conference in Nashville. I will call on witnesses to testify to the countless other occasions when I didn’t act my age. Les Paul, one of my heroes, played with rock, blues and jazz musicians into his 90s. He was no old fool, just cool.
So there are some old hipsters who don’t need a “hip” transplant, who feel comfortable in the language environs of the emoticonic young.
That said, I do think that there is a cultural value worth upholding. It’s called decorum, which is why I didn’t sing “My Humps” at my father-in-law’s funeral. One expression of decorum is what is now referred to as “age-appropriate” style or behavior. I don’t want to see a padded bikini top on a seven-year-old girl, Mr. Abercrombie. Or a thong on an octogenarian.
Such style standards carry over to writing style. Me, Myself, and I are just not comfortable using LOLs or OMGs or even WTFs in my writing, unless it is in a satirical or analytic way. I feel the same about many of the words found in various urban dictionaries.
You may hear me, with humor in my voice, talking about getting “props” from my “peeps” or giving a “shout-out” to my “dawg” Jeff. But when you hear it, you have a right to be skeptical because I’m using the language of a discourse community to which I do not belong. If I’m willing to take the risk, I must be willing to face the consequences.
Every language choice I make adjusts the tone of my voice. I believe in the idea of “levels of language.” Word choice — from formal to informal, from general to specific — marks the place where I stand to make meaning. Turn “do not” into “don’t” and I have already taken a big step toward informality.
Roger Ebert did not become Roger Ebert by using acronyms and smiley faces. They are not what make him sound smart, funny, interesting and insightful. Used to excess, these informal language elements make a writer look like the “senex amans” from Roman comedy, the decrepit old man who marries the hot young girl — and who will inevitably wind up looking the fool because of it.
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