So you thought texting-speak was new

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:28 PM -0500 1/17/11, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>Sorry, Ben, I only remember what I write (sometimes).  But I should
>have remembered what I was complimented for!
>
>In fact, as Ben did not point out, David's 1860 example is the same
>poem that Ben told us was in the British Library exhibit,

--and (since I remember what I write (sometimes)) that was also
mentioned here in 2002, when I was citing a paper by Allen Walker
Read in his collection (PADS 86) that includes the verse of the same
Catherine Jay poem that contains the prototexting alphanumeric "b4",
from an 1832 reprint AWR had discovered.

LH

>  and can be seen here
>http://books.google.com/books?id=Uek9_qcFbUIC&pg=PA69#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
>Joel
>
>At 1/17/2011 01:11 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
>>On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>
>>>  Has the collective memory forgotten my example from
>>>  1813? A higher ratio of text to texting than David's 1860 example,
>>>  but definitely in the genre.
>>
>>And there's this from 1828:
>>
>>  http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2398/
>>
>>--bgz
>>
>>--
>>Ben Zimmer
>>http://benzimmer.com/
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society -  http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>------------------------------------------------------------ The
>American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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