Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

I know someone who's going to be indignant over this

It's official: Twitter kills the Queen's English
The Queen's English Society, which has caviled at writers', politicians' and entertainers' "misuse" of the language for 40 years, is disbanding at the end of the month, its chairwoman, Rhea Williams, announced in a message to members, The Independent reported Monday.

(Befitting the organization's traditionalist bent, Williams insists on being called "chairman.")
It's basically an issue of too few participants.

On the other hand, there's this:

Diamond Jubilee Weekend: Be as a Queen in the World of Tech and Texts, Mobile App Texts with Queen’s English
Apparently the application is structured using aspects of the Queen's English. Therefore, if the user writes "it's", the programme changes it to "it is". In addition, since the Queen has a tendency to maintain a positive tone in communications, words echoing the same sentiment are used. Finally, there is also the opportunity to learn the Queen's English, from historical texts and also from emails, texts and/or social media data.

"The Queen's language reveals that she has a generally optimistic frame of mind and so the words 'confident', 'delighted', 'glad' and 'please' were uttered 125 times more than her famous 'annus horribilis,' which was the phrase that she used in the 1992 Windsor Castle fire," said Medlock, who has a PhD in natural language processing from the University of Cambridge.
They analysed speeches and various documents from the Queen. I use another application, Swype, so won't be downloading the module, but it is rather interesting. People could use some better grammar in their texting. :) I wonder if it changes 'app' to 'application'?

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