If you’ve been joining in chat room conversation, or trading e-mail with Web pals, you have become one of the millions who write in a special short form of English.

    And you’ve got a sense of humor about short forms like SOHF（= sense of humor failure） to describe Internet new-comers who understand you. Across the globe, every night teenagers and their elders are “talking” online__ many of them all talking at the same time.

    It’s fast: try talking to six people at once. It’s brief: three or four words per exchange. It takes wit （智慧）, and quick fingers.

    Want to enter a conversation? Just type PMFJI（= pardon me for jumping in ）.

    Interested in whom you’re talking to? A/S/L, the nearly universal request to know your pal’s age, sex and location. You may get 15/M/NY as a response form your pal.

    If something makes you laugh, say you’re OTF（=on the floor）, or LOL（= laughing out loud）, or combine the two into ROTEL（= rolling on the floor laughing）.

    And when it’s time to get back to work or go to bed, you type GTG（= got to go） or TTYL（= talk to you later）. People want to write as fast as possible, and they want to get their ideas across as quickly as they can. Capital letters are left in the dust, except when expressing strong feelings, as it takes more time to hold down the “shift” key and use capitals. Punctuation （标点） is going, too.

1. In order to talk to several people at the same time on the Internet,__________.

   A. you have to speak fast and fluently

   B. you should speak with wit and humor

   C. one should pay much attention to the use of exact words

   D. you have to express your ideas in a brief way

2. If you get 17/F/NY as an answer to you're a/S/L, it means __________.

   A. you are talking to a girl who is 17 and lives in New York

   B. the person who is talking to you is a 1.7-foot-tall New York girl

   C. you are talking to 17 girls who are from New York

   D. the person on the other end is 17 from New York and he is fine

3. To save time on the Internet, __________.

   A. some people leave their letters in the dustbin

   B. some people never use “shift” in their writing

   C. people seldom use capital letters and punctuation

   D. many people leave the capital or punctuation

One silly question I simply can’t stand is “How do you feel?” Usually the question is asked of a man in action — a man on the go, walking along the street, or busily working at his desk. So what do you expect him to say? He’ll probably say, “Fine, I’m all right,” but “you’ve put a bug in his ear” — maybe now he’s not sure. If you’re a good friend, you may have seen something in his face, or his walk, that he overlooked that morning. It starts him worrying a little. First thing you know, he looks in a mirror to see if everything is all right, while you go merrily on your way asking someone else, “How do you feel?”
Every question has its time and place. It’s perfectly acceptable, for instance, to asked “How do you feel?” if you’re visiting a close friend in the hospital. But if the fellow is walking on both legs, hurrying to catch a train, or sitting at his desk working, it’s no time to ask him that silly question.
When George Bernard Shaw, the famous writer of plays, was in his eighties, someone asked him, “How do you feel?” Shaw put him in his place. “When you reach my age,” Shaw said, “either you feel all right or you’re dead.”
26. The passage tells us that some greetings such as “How do you feel?” __________.
A. show one’s consideration for others     
B. are a good way to make friends
C. are proper to ask a man in action       
D. generally make one feel uneasy
27. The question “How do you feel?” seems to be correct and suitable when asked of _________________________.
A. a man working at his work                 B. a person having lost a close friend
C. a stranger who looks somewhat worried   D. a friend who is ill
28. The writer seems to feel that a busy man should _________________.
A. be praised for his efforts             
B. never be asked any questions
C. not be troubled                    
D. be discouraged from working so hard
29. “You’ve put a bug in his ear” means that you’ve _________________.
A. made him laugh merrily              
B. given him some kind of warning
C. shown much concern for him          
D. played a joke on him
30. George Bernard Shaw’s reply in the passage shows his __________.
A. cleverness         B. cheerfulness              C. power and skills        D. politeness                          

People who put a smiley face at the end of a message, in an attempt to show feeling, show no feeling. I wish there was a symbol for two fingers in the air.
I had some bad news this week. My manager informed me of this news via email. It was like hearing about the death of a loved one via pigeon. Bad news should only ever be delivered face to face or voice to voice.
We seem to celebrate our numerous methods of communication, but really there is no communication at all. I talk to my plants more than I talk to my neighbors, I get text messages that take me three hours to read because they’re written like this: “Hi, I ope you av a gr8 day. Call me La8tr.” I had an email from someone this week that read, “Da ut ov 2day are really annoying me!” Ut? I had to say this 20 times before I understood it. Youth has now become ut. Haven’t we taken enough from them—now we have to take their letters?
I had an email recently from a girl who used to live over the road from me as a child. She wrote, “Hi Shazia, howz u? Im sure u used 2 live across the road from me. We sumtimes played tennis 2 gever at the park and you was in your eliment. I am married now wif 3 daughters.” Then, to my horror, she ended the email with: “Im now teachin in Leeds. Luv Clare.”
Teaching? With English like this. It’s like saying you’re a train driver when you’ve never seen a train. It was like reading modern Morse code.
Getting bad news via email makes it seem so much worse than it actually is. Just a few lines, no emotion, no comfort, not really an explanation. Just a few cold hard words. It’s an excuse. Just write a few words and the problem of delivering it is no longer yours. A close friend recently told me she was very happy to announce she was getting married—and made the announcement by email. I don’t know how she didn’t fall off her chair with excitement while writing it. If you are really happy or really sad to announce something important, wouldn’t you like a human reaction? Some euphoria, elation, tears, a punch in the face?
I receive long text messages every day with information and explanations that I don’t bother reading. They’re boring, and annoy me. In the time it took someone to write me three laborious texts, they could have called, spoken to me, made some tea. People who put a smiley face at the end of a sentence, in an attempt to show feeling, show no feeling. I wish there was a symbol for two fingers in the air, because that’s the one I’d send back.
The telegram has been responsible for reporting world-shattering events when there were very few other options(选择权). Now we have options, and people opt for the least humane one. My mum, in an attempt to get down with the ut of today, asked me to teach her to text. Now she constantly texts me in block capitals, so it looks as if she is still angry and annoyed with me after all these years.
People don’t even write by hand any more. My doctor prints out prescriptions from his computer; even my mechanic prints out a receipt. I get typed Christmas cards and my friends send me emails. I get very excited when hand-written letters come through my door, only because they rarely do.
When I was at school, the girls used to write letters to each other, even though we sat side by side and spoke to one another all day. I think it was a way of expressing private things we were afraid to say when we were 14 and too shy. We used to write things like, “You are my best friend, can’t wait to sit next to you in math.”
I miss the personal method of communication. Once the pen was mightier than the sword, now it seems the keyboard is mightier than the pen.
【小题1】We can learn from paragraph 3 and paragraph 4 that the writer wants to say ________.