BlackBerry writing – watch out

Ask any language purist and they'll tell you how technology is affecting the English language - in other words, watching it go down the tubes...

How many of you dash off an email, only to look at it later and see the horrendous mistakes you've made - but you think hey, the other guy will know what I mean?

And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, along comes BlackBerry and smaller keyboards and ‘worse' takes on a whole new meaning.

I received an email via Blackberry the other day which went something like this, "Ys I agre parent cjild input os very necessary. Wll look inot ti." And, no, the writer isn't dyslexic.

When the sender got my reply, where I mentioned she might want to re-look at this before sending it to anyone else, she apologised and said her fingers had been cold. The writer by the way is a freelance journalist! And had this been the actual pitch she was about to send to an editor I can't imagine the editor's reaction. Well, yes I can - they'd can it.

Today everyone does their own correspondence but sadly not everyone can spell nor write a grammatically correct sentence. Gone, it seems, are the days when people had secretaries - do they even exist anymore? There are PAs - but do they take dictation? Does anyone learn shorthand or speedwriting these days? When a secretary had taken dictation or transcribed from the Dictaphone, the results were presented for the boss to look over before signing and I have a feeling that in those days very few mistakes were found.

The trouble today is that bosses are sending their own communications and these are generally dismal - and now with BlackBerry even worse.

The moral of the story - read your messages out loud. It takes a few seconds and can really prevent a red face and the impression that you're illiterate!