If you’ve already translated the title of this column (it’s grammar: complete waste of time for the clueless among you), then you’re a text messager, and I’m talking to you. In your hands – in your fingertips, actually -- lies the future of grammar as we know it.  What, you are asking, does text messaging have to do with grammar? 

Nothing.

And therefore, everything.

Grammar and text messaging go together like peanut butter and eggs. Or ham and jelly. You get the idea.  The accepted rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation -- the rules that govern the use of language – don’t apply to text messaging or IMing or even emailing, the most common ways we communicate with each other these days (that is, when we’re not talking on cellphones).  That means that the way you are comfortable communicating every day is in conflict with the way writers write.

A word about rules, grammatical and otherwise:  When we all agree on the rules and play by them, whether the game is an actual game, like basketball, or a metaphoric game, like writing, then the game proceeds.  We can choose to play it (for example, we can write), or we can choose to watch it (read).  But either way, we understand what’s going on. We can follow and enjoy the game because the accepted and acknowledged rules that underlie it give it form and a pleasing predictability.  A simple, accepted rule of grammar, for example, is that the word that begins a sentence starts with a capital letter. Another is that a sentence ends with a piece of terminal punctuation.  Spelling, of course, is all about rules: doubling or not doubling consonants, possessives and contractions, -ence versus –ance, i before e except after c.

But when you’re striding down the street using your thumbs to click on a tiny touchpad, and when what you tap out has to fit on the receiver’s 160-character cellphone screen, the usual rules just don’t apply.  Of course, it’s not just the medium that negates the traditional rules.  It is also the purpose, the goal – why you are playing the game.  Text messaging, an abbreviated form of computer instant messaging (which is, itself, an abbreviated form of email) is all about quick, casual, instantaneous communication.  The purpose is not to communicate intellectually or emotionally complex material.  The emoticon is about as deep as it gets.  The purpose is not to have far-ranging discussions or reason out a problem or to bring up thought-provoking issues.  The purpose is to check in – r u ok? – to confirm a date – cu @ 10? – or make a quick comment – BTDT (been there, done that), NBD (no big deal). 

So what’s the BD (big deal)?  Real writing – the narrative nonfiction we write for magazines or newspapers or books -- follows rules that text messaging and IMing do not. 

What’s the problem?

The problem, for some of you (and you know who you are), is not realizing that there are different rules for different kinds of communication.  The problem is when you practice – every day, many times a day – a certain way of writing (the short-cut, no-traditional-rules way of writing), you can get so comfortable with it that you forget how specialized it is.  You forget it was created for a narrow purpose – let’s call it insta-talk -- and not for the wider, more important, long-term purpose of telling compelling stories across time and space.  Just because the coded shorthand of the txt msg works when you are text messaging doesn’t mean it works when you are writing a magazine story.  Just because lack of punctuation is fine when you IM your friend does not mean it is fine when you write for publication.

Compared to text messaging and IMing, email seems old-fashioned, stodgy even.  Although not as impossibly quaint as an actual letter placed in an actual envelope and deposited in an actual mailbox, email is nonetheless comparatively prim and proper.  Emailers spend more time (and use more words) constructing messages than IMers or texters.  They are more likely to write in full sentences and less likely to use shortcuts (b4, gr8, g2cu) or abbreviations (gtg) or contractions that may, with enough use, confound correct spelling (thnx, ur).  Adhering to grammatical conventions makes sense because email is, in fact, more formal than IMing or texting.  Although friends certainly email friends in a casual way, email is also an integral part of the professional world.   In journalism, the email pitch has eclipsed the written query letter, and discussion about a story between writer and editor is more likely to be conducted via email than telephone.

Dependence on email in the professional world combined with its limbo-land status – less formal than the letters and memos of old, more formal than friend-to-friend text messaging – is creating problems, big problems, say those in the business world.  According to a survey of 120 American corporations, one third of employees in the nation’s top-notch companies write so poorly (in both emails and reports) that businesses are spending more than $3 billion a year on remedial training.

Okay, these cubicle-dwellers are not writers and you are.  Just because they can’t write a decent email doesn’t mean you don’t.  You probably write crisp, coherent, graceful emails that illustrate your writerly prowess.  Or not.  According to my very unscientific sample of seven editors (three magazine, two book, two newspaper), poorly written email is an issue.  The editors are offended by it.  In fact, the editors reject story ideas because of it. 

What’s wrong with these offensive emails?  Some employ conventions uncomfortably close to the shorthand used by texters (Thnx 4 ur tym, for example).  The message being sent – not the words themselves but the underlying message – is lack of professionalism and a flap-dash attitude, not what you want to be saying about yourself or your writing abilities.  Other emails are just the opposite: inflated and flabby, stuffed with polysyllabic words, cluttered phrasing and tortured sentence structure. And then there are the just plain incoherent emails riddled with incorrect punctuation, misplaced or dangled modifiers, incorrect word choice or syntax so tangled that it would take a machete to cut through it. 

I think the lesson here is that the cavalier attitude toward grammatical conventions that comes from, and is daily reinforced by, IMing and texting is decidedly NOT the attitude a writer wants to take – even when writing a simple email, not to mention an actual piece of work.  And here’s another lesson I’ll throw in for free:  Just because you can type fast, doesn’t mean you should write fast.