So your Grandfather thinks ‘lol’ means ‘Lots of Love. We all laugh Ho! Ho! Ho! But somewhere in the midst of the hilarity there is a serious side. Is it possible we’ve turned our language into chaotic noise? I know that today our communication is driven by the acronym rather than the beauty of rustling, rhythmic whispers which the poets of yesterday so earnestly constructed.

In considering the matter carefully, I concluded that the use of acronyms is in fact all about time, or if you like the saving of time. That it confuses and creates misunderstandings through the generations is of no consequence, as Grandad discovered. He’s spent the last three weeks trying to pronounce OMG in a sentence and when the clever texters who have discarded English for a tribal alternative have finished laughing at the old bugger they’ll probably start on honing a complete sentence of acronyms which will save at least 15 seconds of their valuable time. It’s ironic that we’ve forgotten the purpose of a language is to clearly express and communicate.

If it hasn’t yet smacked you in the face, then what I’m saying and indeed defending is the use of clear, concise, structures called sentences. Perhaps it is ironic that the shortest sentence in the Bible is, “Jesus wept”. Ironic because that’s what I do every day when I watch the mass destruction of the English language by smart alecs who can’t string two sentences together.

Lafcardo Hearn once said, “Because they cannot hear the whispering of words, the rustling of the procession of letters, the dream-flutes and dream-drums which are thinly and weirdly played by words: Is that any reason why we should not try to make them hear, to make them see, to make them feel?”

So for those who say who cares, ask yourself why our emails are so pathetically misunderstood and you’ll find the answer in this very blog. Letters alone cannot express our emotions and it is our feelings which we need to communicate.

When Grandad saw LOL he grabbed it with his emotions and he thought it meant LOVE and why not? But what is important is that all our communication must be filled with clarity. There can be no misunderstanding. Some things are worth preserving. Leave our sentences, our words and our phrasing alone. And let’s write with sentiment, with feeling and use those words to gentle persuade, express and communicate. Make them hear, make them see, make them feel.