Let me give you a brief tour of my day at school. You have to close your eyes of course! So close them. Now as we start walking down the hall, you’ll hear a variety of different sayings; from “Omg I’m gonna fail this test” to “Lawlz” to “That bio test was supes hard” or even “I mean I can probs hangout tonight.” Just keep walking, those wont be the only abbreviations you’ll hear today.''

The next stop on our tour is my biology class. While you’re in this class you’ll hear a detailed lecture on genetics, but what you didn’t expect to hear in the duration of this lecture will be “Fave” or “Serious sty” and a conversation sounding something like, “Did you see that sick slapper I shot last night?” “I defs did.” Wait, what? Yeah. I know. Frankly, I’d say this weird lingo is pretty “ridic”.

Just take a moment and let’s think this over; using abbreviations can be extremely helpful many times, but when it begins to affect the intelligence level of our everyday conversations, personally, it vexes me. I find myself asking why people feel the need to shorten a five-letter word to a three-lettered one if it will take the exact same amount of effort and time. That amount of time being most likely less than a second and the amount of effort almost certainly taking half of a breath. If you want to write yourself a reminder of what to buy at the grocery store on your way home from work and you happen to abbreviate some of the words, feel free to do so; you won’t sound unsophisticated writing to yourself like you would if you were to say something to your boss such as, “Omg I probs should start working on that supes long report about how the economy totes sucks.” So why does this always happen in our conversations nowadays? Well ladies and gentlemen, I hate to be the one to break this to you but…People. Are. Lazy. Take the word “sty” for example. Every day I hear this word said quite a few times. Say it aloud, “Sty.” Now say the actual word, “Style.” Wow, your life must be so much easier because you dropped the ‘l’ and ‘e’. And that ‘e’ was silent. I’m guessing you don’t feel any different. That’s just it; abbreviating a word by dropping two letters is not going to change your life or make it any easier. So quit being so lazy and just say the word in its entirety. Although it might be a bit harsh, it’s true that once a person uses their own version of a word, they sound as if they are making up their own language and it really doesn’t make their life any easier. I think it’s about time to get back to the tour!

Next stop, English class.

Today we’re discussing the Shakespearian play we’ve been reading. Let’s talk about Shakespeare for a bit. William Shakespeare once said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” I don’t know about you, but I haven’t run into anyone who talks like that recently, or ever, which is absolutely okay because as time passes, language changes. There’s nothing wrong with modern-day language, the only problem with modern day communication is when people start to make up words by shortening the actual word, the message can lose its eloquence and importance. I’d like to hear some of my classmates attempt to get the same message across that Shakespeare did so expressively. They’d most likely say something similar to, “It’s totes easier to fool yourself than it is to fool other peeps.” What’s wrong with this? Some might not think anything is wrong at all, but maybs they are mistaken. Let’s try this again, but let’s substitute totes and peeps for actual words. “It’s much easier to fool yourself than it is to fool others.” Not only does this sound much more intelligent, it also makes Shakespeare’s point without taking any shortcuts or losing wit. I’m absolutely, one-hundred percent not saying that we should speak like Shakespeare did the four-hundred years or so ago that he was alive, but when people choose the lazy abbreviations, they lose the sophistication of language by adding these modern-day shortened words.