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Does that kind of digibabble bother you as much as it does me? I admit that I like to chat on the Internet, but as soon as someone responds to me with that kind of abbreviated talk, I instantly put them on the ignore list.

I can’t help it. I’m a stickler for using the correct word to convey the message and the only thought I get from that kind of talk is that the person chatting is one of two things – either lazy or uneducated. And the problem with the former is that they get used to this kind of talk and are helping to erode the English language.

I admit that I regularly use two abbreviations – brb and lol. But to me, those two aren’t really as much abbreviations as they are symbols. Sometimes I tend to overuse lol, forgetting that it means laughing. It seems like it’s become almost like the standard response to anything someone tells you on the net, if you don’t have an answer right away – or if your answer is oblique at all.

Other than those two, however, I prefer to speak in complete words and complete sentences and it drives me batty to be asked, “how r u” or anything similar.

Does that make me an elitist, as one person on the net alluded to when I asked him to speak correctly? (Of course, he didn’t use the word elitist – but he got the point across, in his digibabble.) Or does it make me someone who understands the language and doesn’t want to see it degenerate into digibabble?

OK, I know that not everyone is educated enough to have a large vocabulary and/or know the spelling of long words, but it seems to me that someone in that category could still use entire words to chat. What is strange is that sometimes, these digibabble words are almost as long in letters as the real word. I mean, how much harder is it to type in “to” than it is to use “2″? In fact, it might be easier to type in “to” because you don’t have to reach for the number board.

This little sermon isn’t very long, but it’s time to climb down off the soapbox, since my favorite chat buddy just logged on – and she uses whole words. lol