OMG, TTYL, IDK, IKR, IDC. Personally, I hate these words. It annoys me when they are used in a regular conversation. If you are talking to me face to face could you at least be bothered to use real words???
I personally find it annoying to ask someone a question that could be as simple as: “What are you doing on the weekend?” To hear the response “IDK,” is pretty rude and makes you seem like that person is not trying at all to be a part of the conversation. Sure, you may not know what you’re doing on the weekend but could you at least respond with a “Oh, I don’t really know,” or even a, “We don’t have any plans just yet.”
Look I’m sorry if that’s too much to ask but it is more polite and a whole lot more social.
As I understand, using these “phrases” became more popular after twitter because of the 140 characters per post limit. So, I understand why you may use them there.
However, when you are having a discussion face to face with someone, no one is monitoring how many words, letters or syllables you use.
OMG stands for Oh My God or Oh My Gosh. You say the same number of syllables (3) whether you say OMG or Oh My God. So, the only thing that happens when you use the abbreviation in real life is that you may com across as anti-social or uncaring. There is no actual shortening to how much you are saying.
The same applies for IDK, (I Don’t Know) IKR, (I Know Right) and IDC (I Don’t Care).
So aside from when you are tweeting and you only have 140 characters the benefits of shortening words aren’t really there.
So Why Text Talk?
To me it just seems unnecessary and because of how short and blunt it is, it can make you seem anti-social, possibly rude, uninterested and uncaring.
Yet it seems that Text talk is becoming a staple piece of 21st Century English Language.
I have one request for anyone who reads this.
Can we keep the text talk in the text and out of conversation???
FOTP: The most common name in the world is Mohammed.