OMG!!! Txt Speak Is the Future of Biz Email :)

Have multiple exclamation points, smiley faces and text-speak abbreviations like “gr8″ and “2mro” been increasingly creeping into your email inbox at work? Are you annoyed by this influx of excessive punctuation and silly abbreviations? If so, at least one HR pro thinks you should stop being stodgy and get over it, arguing text speak is an elegant solution to our modern, fast-paced communication style and the way of the future.

Speaking to Entry-Level Rebel, Kathy Kane, SVP of talent management at HR firm Adecco, weighed in on the increased prevalence of “text language” in professional emails. And surprisingly, she’s not too bothered by young people’s increasing unwillingness to write in standard English or the way their writing style is seeping into the emails of older business people. She says:

This is a generation that grew up texting and IMing, so they created their own language to make that more efficient and that facilitated them communicating more significant messages in fewer characters. I think it’s taken hold even in the corporate world because it is a quicker way to get a message across. The language has a brilliance to it because we’re all trying to do things so fast today.

Because email has replaced so much verbal communication, there needs to be a way to communicate the meaning and emotion behind a message. Sometimes in a short email, the wrong kind of feeling behind the message is conveyed, so I like the use of emoticons as a way of letting someone know how you feel, for example, when you’re giving direction to someone but also want to allay their fears.

But watch out veteran texters, Kane isn’t giving text speak enthusiasts free rein to skip learning basic grammar or go wild with their punctuation — at least not at first. She warns that too many emoticons or exclamation points too early in a business relationship can have negative consequences:

It can tend to seem more juvenile or peg someone as less experienced. If a younger person is communicating with someone who is at a much higher level in the organization or someone that they don’t know very well, they probably have to be pretty careful about their use of text language or emoticons.

I advise younger people to take the opportunity now and then to show that they actually do have good communication skills, so if you’re sending an email to your boss, put together good, complete, well thought out sentences that show you have these skills. When you’ve established that, you’re much more free to send shorter messages containing shorthand language.

For those of you hoping for a backlash against abbreviated email language, Kane points to the increasing number of CEOs, celebrities and high-profile journalists on Twitter, straining to get their message out in only 140 characters. With this sort of training in concision and grammatical corner cutting, Kane sees a bright future for text speak in the corporate world.

What’s your opinion of text language — brilliant and creative or completely aggravating?


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