I came across this fictional telegram from the 1940s the other day:
DEAR MA. PLEASE TELEGRAPH THIRTY DOLLARS. WANT TO COME HOME. AM FINE. EVERYTHING OK. JOHN.”
–from William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, Chapter Three
It had me thinking about Twitter, text messages, the way language changes, and the panic that inevitably ensues over what, it is feared, will be lost. It’s nice to know that a couple centuries after technology first forced people into compacting the lettered text of their ideas so bluntly for the sake of speedy communication–the telegraph was in wide use by the mid 1800s–we are still as interested in using text towards its most elaborate, most eloquent capacities, as we are in finding new ways to break its rules, and to jar it awake, and to force it jam-packed with concise meaning. Long live long and short forms.
