Emails...

I feel like a disillusioned school teacher, but the folks of Southwest Florida have severely sorrowed me. I created a little experiment one day, posting an ad on that marvelous window to humanity known as "Craigslist" that asked for someone to be an email pen-pal with. I've received a million and one replies to my silly little post, and 98.5% of them have read something along the lines of: "hey r u 4 reall?/ i wud like to talk so hit me up sumtim k" I mean, honestly, if you're going to simply omit letters from some words (which I would assume is an attempt to type faster) then why leave some in? Why make "would" "wud" but leave "like" alone? Is there a rule to this? Must we keep the silent "e" at all costs? Of course, it's omitted in "sometime," as well as two other correct letters. Maybe there's a letter limit? Five letters for one syllable is right out? Maybe that's it. It must be a code... a code among theives of the English language.

Though then you have to take into account the random added letters that are scattered about hither and thither. One could chalk it up to a typo or perhaps a nervous twitch in the fingers, the result of a nasty knife fight accident, but I don't think that would suit the code. I think we must give these monsters more credit. Surely the added letters denote an important facet of the sentence's meaning? Perhaps a word containing seemingly unnecessary duplicate letters is a key word, needing emphasis and demanding attention?

With that in mind, we must take a closer look at the double punctuation and also at the lack of punctuation. Since "?" and "/" are on the same key on a keyboard, this is a kind of duplicate symbol as used in the sentence above. However, there must be a marked difference in meaning between simply typing two "?"s and a "?" and "/." Two "?" would indicate an urgency and pleading in the question, whereas I believe the substitution of "/" for the second "?" denotes that there will be a severe backlash, or repercussion, if the question is not heeded. This is how the thieves can differentiate between the urgency of pleading questions, which would receive two "?," and the threat of demanding questions, which receive both a "?" and a "/."

As for the lack of any form of punctuation in the least, it is obviously a sign of the apathy of the author. Not apathy towards the English language, but apathy towards the reader. In the sentence above, the author has stated his intent on talking with me "sumtim." This would imply that he would like to build a relationship of some degree with another person. As we all know, this is considered decidedly "uncool" for the average young man under the pressures of society. No man is supposed to need a relationship with anyone but fellow gang members, after all, so to hide the embarrassment of the sentiment, punctuation is omitted. This proves that he's just saying it because he thinks it might be a lark, not that he might enjoy a meaningful correspondence with another human. This taken into account, it also gives a double meaning to the double punctuation seen earlier in the sentence. "?/," as we know, is a threat, but use the very same keys without the "Shift" button, and you get "??," the plea. It is important he keep his uber-tough-guy facade in tact, to the threat is made, but just below the surface, we see a cry for human companionship and care.

The final part of the code to look into in the sentence above is the substitution of words with numbers and single letters. I believe single letters to be an efficiency rule alone, but the use of numbers contains a double meaning. I am quite certian times and dates can be secretly hidden in sentences with this technique when using the code properly. If we look at the sentence above, we can see that the use of the "4" is to draw our attention to every fourth character. This would give us: re?uktstpt. Let's break that down.

"Re?" is a plea for a response, using the abbreviation common in emails. The rest is quite simple really. It stands for "U kan talk so terible pretty, totaly" which is why he wants to form a relationship in the first place.

*Sigh* Well, that's my theory, at least.