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Re: txt msgs & BrSc

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Monday, June 18, 2001, 19:33
Raymond Brown wrote:
> >If all youngsters who indulge in web chats & ICQ messaging were familiar >with this use of {txt}, I would agree. But I can assure you, that as a >lecturer in Computer Science I am painfully aware that now (unlike 10 years >ago) on this side of the the vast majority of my students have no idea what >filename suffixes are and are hopelessly lost outside their Windows >environment - and as for other operating systems, forget them; and as for >trying to teach them to program, I think I'd have more success if I tried >teaching them Sanskrit. As a programmer, I find it depressing so few are >interested - but I'm getting a bit off topic now. > >No, I feel most think the {x} = /Eks/, analogous to the {8} in {gr8}. after >all they are used to {Xmas} /"Eksm@s/ and {xray} /"Eksrej/. Indeed, there >is a distinct tendency here for semi-literate to read initial x- as /Egz/ >in unusual words, e.g. 'xanthic' /Eg"zanTIk/, 'xiphoid' /Eg"zIfQjd/, >'Xerxes' /Eg"z@(r)ksiz/, etc. I've even heard /Eg"zajl@f@un/ !
You may well be right, but I suspect that {txt} for "text" was introduced by people used to DOSesque three-character file-endings. FWIW, when I came accross it for the first time, I immediately associated to .txt-files, and I'm most certainly no computer geek (trying to teach me Sanskrit is guaranteed to be more successful than trying to teach C++!), tho' I might be a couple of years older than the typical Abbrev-using teen. The shortening text>txt is so small that I feel it's less likely to arise as a practical solution. When it's been used for a while, nobody'll really think about its origin anymore.
> >But the interpretation of individual symbols in 'Abbrev' is, I think, a bit >of a red herring. I think we'll probably all agree that however they're >used, their usage is not consistent.
Obviously not. And the goal is not always brevity either - sometimes variant spellings are used just because they're "k00l". Yuck!, I really hate that spelling but you get the point. Andreas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.