Rolf Windenberg

Mathematical Playfulness: A Humorous Approach to Reforming English Orthography

The desire to shorten texts to reduce the effort of writing has always been very popular. Among others, this has led to the invention and common use of stenography (e.g. by secretaries). However, use of stenography is demanding a non-negligible learning effort. Therefore, people were looking for alternatives requiring much less learning expenditure. An example for a completely different approach to shorten texts is represented by the kind of writing which is popular, in particular, among our current young generation, e.g., when writing and sending SMS messages or eMails. Here, formulations such as “CU” or “C U” (for “see you”), “U R …” (for “you are …”), “coffee 2 go” (for “coffee to go”), “tea 4 U” (for “tea for you”), “2 4 1” (for “two for one”), etc are pretty common.