soapboxing
To begin, a disclaimer.
I make this resolution not because today is the first of the year, although I will admit, I find the first of the year a perfect time to begin. I make this resolution not for or against any politician, and not because of anyone but myself, my truest self, the self-empowered part of me that sometimes wakes me from my sleep to scream, "I have something to say!" I make this resolution for her, the writer inside of me, who likes to tell stories for people who find the time to listen.
Today, the first of the new year, a brand new beginning at 10:53 at night, I resolve to do something to show my faith and conviction in the words that stream from my mind to my fingertips to paper or binary coding forming letters on the internet.
I am never going to use another emoticon again. It should be the power and strength of my vocabulary that allows my readers to understand me, not the excess of characters I tag along at the end.
As a product of the information age, a child of my generation, the temptation to do so is far too convincing. Text messages and IMs both require rapid responses, and it is a million times easier to press two buttons and send a smiling face than it is to spell out words that could communicate my response so much clearer.
I may be young, but I am an extraordinarily intelligent young woman. I read enough books to have a big enough vocabulary to know a word for every imaginable situation. This vocaubulary I have nurtured since reading Dr. Seuss books at the age of three, in a language that has been refined over and over and over again since the first caveman sludged his way out of the primordial soup and decided which grunt meant "fire" and which meant "wheel." As a writer, and even moreso as a human being capable of sentient thought, I have neither the right nor the inclination to reduce a language so versatile, a million synonyms for every word, into a simple two characters to form a grinning face.
Starting today, this very moment, I will refuse to condone anyone's degradation of this most human inheritance, the beauty of language. I will not raise my children in a world with only one word for each emotion, and I will not participate in one myself.
George Orwell as a philosopher is grossly under appreciated, falling under the shadow of Orwell the writer, but it was Orwell the philosopher who said, "Without precise language, there can be no precise thought." I hold his words close to where my heart as I resolve to trust the color and audacity of my words to be able to far better convey the tone of my writing in a much more eloquent way then any string of punctuation ever could. I will never underestimate my audience by assuming they would misinterpret my meaning without a crude picture to show them it at the end of every sentence. I am a writer, and that part inside of me that whispers stories to whoever will listen close enough deserves the chance to express herself on her own.
I owe this to my language, and I owe this to myself.