"Yo, can u plz help me write English?"

This is from the pages of USA Today, Tuesday April 1 2003. No foolin'!

"Carl Sharp knew there was a problem when he spotted his 15-year-old son's summer job application: 'i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids.'

"That night, the father in Phoenix removed the AOL Instant Messenger program from the family computer and informed both his children they were no longer to chat with friends online.

"'That shorthand comes from talking on the Internet, and it's unacceptable,' Sharp says. 'I never thought I'd be encouraging my kids to talk on the telephone, but I realized that the constant chatting on the Internet was destroying their ability to write properly.'

"Parents such as Sharp -- and many educators -- are becoming increasingly alarmed by the effect of Internet communication on the writing skills of U.S. teens..."

In looking at the history of the written form of English, I wonder if, with the rise of instant messaging and "text messaging," we are not seeing the future of how the language will be written. Other aspects of life have become so efficient, at the expense of eloquence. This is typical of the "modernist" mentality in everyday life. Television was influenced by MTV to become a vehicle for rapid-fire images. NBC's The West Wing have characters that talk and wisecrack at such a pace, that one is hard-pressed to follow the series unless already a devotee (which I am, by the way).

Another of life's greatest questions, perhaps.