More on early txtng

[George Thompson]

LH writes: (It wouldn't
> surprise me if someone found other examples from the newspapers of
> the 1820s, when the "O.K." fad was in full flower.)

  I have not ever noticed writing of the b4 u style in the local news stories/letters/humor/ads in NYC newspapers, reading chiefly ca. 1780-1860.  I don't often read the poetry in the papers, or the out-of-town news (though sometimes I am snookered by not realizing that an item is from out of town until after I have read it), or the political rantings (they had political rantings in the early 19th C, too).

Strictly speaking, the O. K. fad was the late 1830s.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Thursday, August 19, 2010 2:32 pm
Subject: Re: More on early txtng
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> At 2:20 PM -0400 8/19/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >At 8/19/2010 02:08 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>Sorry, it's 1832, "To Miss Catherine Jay, of Utica"
> >
> >Good enough to put down the British Library, being before their 1867.
> >
> >Joel
> >
> Yup, by a generation. Back when I posted this in 2002, I was
> wondering if anyone else had other examples of alphanumeric
> proto-texting of the "b4" type from the early 19th c. but nobody
> responded.  Of course the quest is still open, and now the prize is
> to see by how many years we can antedate those Brits!  (It wouldn't
> surprise me if someone found other examples from the newspapers of
> the 1820s, when the "O.K." fad was in full flower.)
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org