The culture of brevity

Increasingly and perhaps as a response to a world too crammed with things to do, I find myself resorting to short-hand quick fixes and abbreviated responses to most things.

I'm not only talking about the language of texting or emoticons that have begun to dominate our narrative. The 'LOLs' (laughing out loud) and 'GTGs '(got to go) and 'ASAPs' that roll off our fingers and are de rigeur in cyber world.

These are but the outer manifestations of a culture in which we are expected to fit into 140 characters our hourly declarations and anthems to the world. A hundred and forty characters! Most of the Bard's plays or Tolstoy's or Dickens' novels had more!

No, I'm talking about the shorthand that passes for conversation these days when one meets new people for instance.

Take the other evening for example: Meeting a delightful new couple for the first time, I found myself talking in a kind of shorthand by referring to all the people and things in my own life that would give them an idea of who I was or what I stood for.

References to books, magazines, relatives, events were all circumnavigated to build up in a few minutes what otherwise would have taken a few days if not months to convey.

This syndrome is best observed on planes before take -off: the two strangers sitting side by side before a long journey know that they have a limited time to make a good impression on each other. Notice how every nugget of information they share about who they are is loaded with a universe of revelation. Where they stay, shop, who they know, are all communicated subtly (or not so subtly) in byte-sized packets to present themselves in the best of lights.

This syndrome is also best observed when people try and project an aspirational presentation of their lifestyle. Notice how brand names drop off their tongue with great felicity. Often I think that The New Yorker cartoon I once chanced upon of a couple whose dialogue balloons only contained the proper names of luxury brands (Bulgari, Vuitton, Perignon, Four Seasons) was not too far from reality. Eavesdrop on conversations at five-star hotel coffee shops between young people and this is more or less what you will hear.

The culture of soundbites for the media of course is another syndrome of this compression of time and space. Those of us who are invited to speak on television programmes know that we are expected to come up with our responses to issues of the day in pithy and compressed statements that do not take up face time. Nuances, questions, explorations, subtexts, thinking aloud and voicing one's doubts are strictly not allowed.

Nowhere is this need for brevity more apparent than in the print media. The long form article is more or less extinct and in its place we have paragraphs where once existed chapters and bullet points where there were once lengthy explanations. After all, in a world where an emoticon of a heart or a smiling face can convey an adequate amount of dialogue, of what use are the verbose or the garrulous?

This phenomenon of abbreviations and their usage was brought home to me recently when an editor texted that I send in a particular column 'by EOD.'

Er, what's EOD, I texted back. 'EOD: End of Day' she texted back, adding the smiley to show she was smiling at my ignorance.

WTMB (will try my best), I shot back. BHADNC (but have a dodgy net connection) SPBWM (so please bear with me) I signed off.

Of course, I ended it with a smiley face.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasmumbai@gmail.com