Seriously. I write all day, every day. You read some of what I write, but not all. I have developed lots of little shortcuts, habits, preferences, etc. I’m an idiosyncratic writer, and not, honestly, a great one. I think I know my strengths – honesty, introspection, openness – and some of my weaknesses – a certain arrogance, a tendency toward long, unclear sentences, and occasional tortured clauses (as well as exceedingly excessive use of parentheticals).
When I’m not writing, it’s a safe bet I’m reading. I read voraciously. E-mails, essays, news, books. You name it. But a consequence both of the quantum of time I spend reading and writing and the workings of my particular brand of OCD is that I have an extremely low tolerance for bad writing, typos, and the like.
The worst, for me, is text-speak.
I’m a guy who does a fair amount of interacting via text, email, and messaging apps. I know the frustrations of trying to communicate using tiny keyboards.
But if you can’t make the effort to spell all the letters in the word “you,” it’s a safe bet we won’t hit it off. Or, at a minimum, it’s a certainty I won’t subject myself to ur messages.
I cringe at text-speak. I hate twitter as well, as it forces me to butcher some words for the sake of character count. I may make mistakes in a hurry, and I certainly don’t catch all the errors if I’m writing from a memory, but it’s not due to laziness.
I’m with you on bad writing and typos. My litmus test is the proper use of “it’s”: if you can use “it’s” and “its” properly (bonus points for putting them both in the same sentence), I’ll definitely sit up and take notice…