Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I’m driving around doing last minute errands before heading to Boston in forty-eight hours.  I don’t know what it is, but various trucks and billboards have caught my eye.  I should be concentrating on driving – especially now that I have an automatic transmission which encourages day-dreaming – but instead I’m musing over our ever-changing language. (I am daydreaming after all.)

It started with a truck that passed me with SWP plastered on its side along with a large can of paint.  I deciphered this as Sherwin Williams Paint.  Which made me think about KFC.  In my younger days, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Just as BK was Burger King.

Abbreviations seem to be the new dialect these days.  I blame texting for starting this phenomenon.  Okay is now truncated to ‘k?’  Please is now ‘pls.’ Thank you is ‘thx.’ Then there’s the ever present ‘app’ ready to be applied to your smart phone or iPad.  Does anyone remember that this really stands for application?

I acknowledge language is a living thing, one that is always adding and subtracting. Still, I’m from the school that believes there are certain inviolate rules.  For instance, OMG would never appear in a Biblical reference even though I just saw it on a sign promoting the Twin City Players’ current offering, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”