Should we be more careful about what we type?

Today’s post is by way of being a question.

Do you think it’s more important in this day and age (than, say, 70 years ago, in my Grandmother’s heyday) to make sure that what you commit to “paper” is coherent, and well thought out? And by “paper”, you know I’m talking about any and all writing – emails, blogs, and even real paper.

After all, it’s not as if it’s hard to edit what you’re typing. I ask the question in the wake of a slew of emails from a friend(?) with whom I recently became re-acquainted. Let me illustrate, with a small snippet from his latest email…

I have tried to write something down and it hurts like emma freuds
when you have had a chilli. some things you don`t know about. the
road to hell is paved with. them.........
this will end up an epic so i`ve just left it. it is nearly 9. war
and peace sometime soon?

my tail wagged, always does, tickle me tummy mummy,huff huff
huff thanks that`s nice, please do it again and I seem to have
cocked my leg and peed on the floor. oops. i`ll try shall we start again?

not enough time tonight to do any decency to a reply, and no brain
for calculation as apparently assumed.

If, like me, you find this completely incomprehensible, you’ll be asking yourself, right about now, why on earth he’s having so much trouble finding the back-space key.

I know there are times when your thoughts are tumbling out of your head, faster than you can easily commit them to words on the page, but surely to goodness, you can read through it before you hit the “send” button?

I know that the aforementioned Grandmother would have been horrified if she’d received the above on a piece of paper, purporting to be a letter. She’d have been appalled that there appears to be little, and inaccurate, punctuation. She’d have been aghast at the contents of the middle paragraph – after all, this is someone with whom I’ve spoken not more than half a dozen times in the last 10 years. In addition to which, I doubt she’d have understood the references to chilli in the first paragraph, either – the second sentence is clearly correct in content, if not form!

The thing is, in this day and age, with most people owning (or having access to) a computer, with even basic word processing ability, I believe it’s totally unacceptable to hit the “send” button on something so appallingly badly written.

And my Grandmother would have taken to email communications like a duck to water! I counted, and as I was typing that last sentence, I had to hit the backspace key no less than 7 times – but at least what I’ve written can be understood by most of you…