Our Declining Language (part 3 in an endless series)

This particular collection addresses a variety of unforgivable sins of signage and other printed matter.

First up: remember how everyone told us that those awful, nonsensical non-words like UR, 2U, GR8, L8TR, and so forth were only invented to accommodate the character limits in early text messaging? Remember how they scoffed when some of us worried that the practice would creep into our language and lend legitimacy to these written equivalents of grunts? Well, it's happened.

These are not words. They're part of a cancerous new language of childish symbols that abandon the dignity and elegance of proper communication.

Meanwhile, misspellings that somehow made it through the production process are everywhere. Keep in mind, someone wrote these, someone approved. them, and someone paid for them to be produced. Inexplicably . . . nobody caught the mistakes. Others may find these aberrations charmingly funny. The Curmudgeon finds them shameful and alarming.

Of course, one can hardly expect accuracy in print when the President's own team fails to proofread.