Why does KD use "u" instead of "you"?

The "good old days" in RL and InG

Why does KD use "u" instead of "you"?

Postby KDSonoma » Mon May 02, 2011 6:11 pm

I'm glad u asked :)

A long time ago, there was a pompous player on Sonoma that thought they were the best at everything (no, not me goobers). This lamer always made me laugh :) (and no its not thrax).

Anyways, there was a post on a forum by a new player who was totally new to the idea of roleplay (rp).

Well, Mr. high and mighty blasts this person because they were not "roleplaying right", plus they had a lot of misspellings etc. The lamer painstakingly pointed out every error in that public post.

Well, me being the King of Sonoma and all, and this high and might being a suckup to the game gms, who set up this Lord British lamer as a false King, well I just had to reply.

I really laid into the lamer, reminding him that using the letter "u" was the common language of everyone in Sonoma except those who sucked up to Lord British, and lived in stinky castles away from the people. I told the lamer that they ,ight understand that if they had ever ventured outside of their castle once in awhile with the people. I went on to say that a King would never live in such a building as a castle.

They would live in a Palace that would be open to the public for many uses, least to mention weddings. After all, who would get married in a stinky dark castle? Sheesh. :)

Anyways, from that day on I vowed (to myself) that I would use the letter "u" as often as possible in posts. It never caught on with others *smiles*, but to this day I remember that new player that was just trying to fit in.

Well, about a week after my post, I was summoned to NJ Palace to meet a player ingame. And yep, it was him (the new roleplayer). He thanked me for sticking up for him. We had a long talk about what he was doing ingame, and that he had a few friends that had started playing with him in Sonoma.

He asked if he could join PAS, and I guilded him instantly. Later I guilded his 3 friends as well. They had a blast and played about a year, and then they all quit UO and went to another game. He met me again at NJ Palace to say goodbye. He said he absolutely loved being in PAS, but his friends were going to another game and he had to go.

He was a great PAS while he was with us, and to this day I cant find his name anywhere on my old files. If u had met him, u would have been impressed.

:)

KD
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Postby Warden » Tue May 03, 2011 5:12 pm

Argh, you are making it harder for me to resent people who use shot-spellings like u and r and l8r and--ACK! I can't even bring myself to type any more of them!

But not to worry, as I will persevere in my distaste. I've mostly gotten over being pompous about it, unless your name is Ciara.

But I do feel compelled to say that it's not just the annoyance factor, or even the perceived laziness or lack of care on the part of the typist that bugs me. It's that it seems youth is becoming less and less literate every year, and the fact that a huge percentage of their reading and writing is in the standards-free cyberspace can't be helping that. So I like to put out as much (reasonably) correct writing as I can.

I don't have time to type it now, but I'll try to come back here and relate a scary experience regarding the literacy of college students.
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...

Postby KDSonoma » Tue May 03, 2011 6:33 pm

I totally agree on the alarmingly high illiteracy rate of many high school and college graduates these days.

But I know u already know that, because u are awesome :)

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Postby Damien Kilcannon » Thu May 05, 2011 1:10 pm

I am currently taking some college courses online through University of Phoenix. Our instructor posts questions relevant to the readings for the week and we as students are expected to answer them and comment on each other's posts. I am absolutely horrified by some of these responses. Everything from lack of punctuation to severe misuse of grammar and incorrect spelling is seen in many of these posts. I can not believe some of these people graduated high school much less passed the entrance exams for the college. I use what I call "net-speak" or "text-talk" in informal communications between family and friends and on boards like these but to do so in a college environment is unacceptable.
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Postby Warden » Thu May 05, 2011 5:45 pm

I'm not surprised, Damien. Literacy is bad enough off the net; online it's atrocious. And I, too, use a more informal style when text-chatting like in UO. It is actual conversation and is structured quite differently from normal writing. Have you ever had to write a transcript of a live event like a meeting? I, at least, think it's very challenging to write it out exactly as it was said, and often find myself "translating" the verbal style into written style, sometimes without even realizing it.

Plus there's the whole issue of "Sorry I didn't use punctuation in that lest sentence but the stygian dragon was breathing blue electric fire up my butt." Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of efficiency. Just not to the point of using "u". Image

As for the story I mentioned above... Back when I was in college, which was a disturbing 13+ years ago, they had a writing test we all had to take sometime during our junior year. For the test, you would go into a classroom where they would give you a couple sheets of paper, a couple pencils, and a printed sheet with three topics on it. The topics were analogous to commonplace things you might see on the news or what have you, and you had to write a paper of about so many words (came out to a page and a half if I remember right) about the topic of your choice. I can't remember now if it was to be informational or argumentative, or maybe we could choose.

The papers were graded simply as pass or fail, meaning you got to pass college or you got to go to remedial English classes. And the grading was not very strict. A few misspellings, comma splices and the like would not fail you. You could even be overly wordy like me and still pass. :lol: They wanted to know simply if you could take information and assemble it into sentences and paragraphs in a reasonably sensible way.

Well I thought the whole thing was a joke. I mean, seriously? Everybody couldn't pass this straight out of eight grade, or at least high school? But a buddy of mine was one of the key people administering this test, so I asked him. Less than half of the students passed on their first try. Adult people who had graduated high school and successfully completed 2.5 years of college, and less than half passed. I was speechless, and still am when I think back to it.

...

^^me being speechless :wink:
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