Anatomy of Short Prose — Tweets,Texts and The Telegraph
20111114

Plato

Plato was confused about writing. He thought that if we started writing things down we would start forgetting all that was so very important to us. He also thought that people with dark skin were more intellegent than people with light skin. Plato never had to send a message by telegraph. He may have sent a message by pidgeon. Certainly the pidgeon would have screwed up the message so Plato must have written it down.

Paper was expensive. Plato probably sent a message to one of his “Platonic” friends. It looked something like this: ‘BBF, P here. Cont-platng Republic… Met Northern BARBARIANS. Stupid people. Feed Bird and Return ASAP.’

Proper Language

Are you worried about language? Should you be. Your ability to maximise communication is critical. I’m not worried about my ability. I just use it and so should you. Let’s say you are the most country/getto ignorant puke. Maybe you are mentally incapable of speach. Regardless of your situation it does not matter because you have not perfected language. Language is what works between people (sentient beings) to get messages from one mind to another.

140 Char. = Tweets

Twitter is a game of endless possibilities within limitation. Within the structure of simplicity how much can you communicate to others. Sometimes the message is so important that you want to abreviate it to make it clear. Other times it is a game of composition: “How much of a clear, concise message can I gramatically and correctly post in 140 characters?”

Texts SMS

Texting is a great thing. It’s hard to argue with information provided by text.

“Why did you give me the wrong address?”

“I didn’t. I gave you the right address. Check your text messages.”

(Checking )

“It says right here: ‘Meet you at 1600 Broad Street.’ ”

“Um, no, (Reads the text message from the phone) It says: ‘Meet you at 1600 W. Broad Street.’ That’s West Broad Street you went to East Broad Street.”

“Oh.”

Easy to make mistakes, but street signs are abreviated too.

Telegram for Mongo

The telegraph message has always been the linguistic precursor to Twitter and Text SMS. People have been screwing up good language for years this way. It’s ok. The question is what works and what does not? You have to figure it out yourself.

You can notice a lot of things that are wrong. You can overlook the infractions and get the message via assumption. You can play lawyer, detective or grammarian and perform an autopsy on the message. You can, upon confusion text back WTF?

The worlds communication moves faster than ever. Everyone is trying to get it done faster. Don’t panic! Save time with a clear composition. Save your brain by getting your idea out. Just make it happen if you think you have something to say.

As the recipient, if you don’t understand say so. If you get no satisfaction. Move on.