tagged with texting

Dickens may have been the first texter in the world. In several places in the manuscript we can see instances of early “text speak” - shortening full words to letters and numbers. As one of several examples on this page, when Dickens imitates Pip’s own writing, he uses “2 u” instead of “to you.”

Dickens may have been the first texter in the world.

In several places in the manuscript we can see instances of early “text speak” - shortening full words to letters and numbers. As one of several examples on this page, when Dickens imitates Pip’s own writing, he uses “2 u” instead of “to you.”

7th February 2012
18 notes
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charles dickens great expectations language literature writer writing texting 
“
[I] would not agree that texting is a saying of more with less, and that it in this respect works as a poem. As the laureate says, poetry is condensed. Text is not condensed, it is truncated. What is more it is normally an affectation of brevity; to express to as 2 and you as u intensifies nothing. Texting is like the old ticker tape: highly dramatic and intense if it’s reporting the Wall Street Crash or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, not through any inherent virtue of the machine. Is the breaking news which runs at the foot of the screen on the BBC news channel condensed and consequently poetic? I fail to see how anyone could rationally claim that it is. Again texting is linear only. Poetry is lines in depth designed to be seen in relation or in deliberate disrelation to lines above and below.

- Geoffrey Hill, Oxford professor of poetry, in response to poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s interview with the Guardian in September of 2011 when she states, “the poem is a form of texting … it’s the original text.”

1st February 2012
5 notes
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carol ann duffy geoffrey hill poems poetry texting poets 

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