OK I feel another rant coming on…. I have ranted before about spelling and how it portrays your business poorly if you make glaring mistakes, but now I am starting to get completely riled by the shortening of words on social media posts.
Thanks to the 140 character width on Twitter I appreciate that you sometimes have to be a bit canny with the way you word things, but using sum instead of some just is not right and I am here to stand up for the English language! I can almost (and I mean almost) put up with numbers being used instead of words i.e. 4-for or 2-to/too and 2B-to be or my personal favourite (not) m8-mate but to change words completely so that their meaning makes no sense just makes me shake my head in shame like a grown up adult – who’d have thought it?
So, what has driven me to a blog post like this today, well normally I wouldn’t name and shame, however, as the company in question this morning is a large well known and well respected company I thought I would actually say GLASGOW AIRPORT why oh why are you letting someone write public notices (Twitter posts) for you who clearly has a tenuous grip on the English language? They are promoting your business and regardless of the fact that this is social media, this doesn’t mean that you can use teenage slang does it m8? Oh and by the way Glasgow airport – the link to your Twitter profile from the home page of your website doesn’t work – just kind of makes everything even worse!
Text messages are predominantly personal, but a Twitter stream or Facebook page especially for large companies is out there in the public domain and I find it incomprehensible that work is not vetted prior to being published online? Perhaps I just need to shut up and realise that this is the way things are going, but I hope not.
