I am inclined to think of "LOL" as analogous to smoking : mindlessly adopted by those who are more influenced by peer pressure than by their own inate intelligence.
Mmm, bit harsh I think Phil? I have used 'lol' on many occasions on this forum but not because I lack intelligence or feel under pressure to 'conform' to an expected style of chat!
Perhaps it came across as harsh, but it was not intended to : rather, it was an honest analysis of my own feelings regarding the use of "LOL", at least when it is clear from the context that the author is most certainly /not/ "laughing out loud", but is, rather, mildly amused at something he has read or written. I confess that there have been times when I have responded "ROTFL" to a message (not many, but more than one), and yes, I wasn't actually "rolling on the floor laughing", but I /was/ very very very amused by what I had just read, and "ROTFL" seemed to sum it up nicely. As to any lack of intelligence, I had quite deliberately written about the LOL users' "inate intelligence" rather than the lack thereof, which I had hoped would make it clear that I did not think them unintelligent...
I think some of us older generation need to progress from the past, and into the present [...] It's a new world out there, embrace it
No thank you, Les, I really have no wish to. "Wanna", "gonna", "I could of", "m8" and their ilk do not represent progress; they are simply manifestations of a deliberate disregard for correctness in writing, and our society is in no way enriched by their adoption by the illiterati.
In Somerset we greet someone with "Ow bis thee" Ow bad english be that ?
It b'aint "bad English" at all; it is a perfectly acceptable production in the Somerset dialect, and no modern descriptive grammarian would dream of criticising its use in speech (so long as the speaker was from that part of the world, that is). But dialect is one thing; a flagrant and deliberate disregard for the accepted rules of written English is something completely different. In my humble opinion, of course.
** Phil.