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Response To John Humphrys

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Response To John Humphrys
Dear Mr John Humphrys,

I respect you with all means, you have voiced your opinion on texting by creating the article ‘Why I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language’ and like you have said what you think, I must express my opinion too.

Firstly, the way you have conveyed your emotion towards the Oxford English Dictionary seems immature, your words: ‘I yield to no man in my love for one’ is overly hyperbolic, also: ‘They are as close to my heart as they are to my desk because they are so much more than a useful tool’ – Your obsessive passion towards dictionaries is unnecessary. Furthermore, you describe looking through a dictionary as ‘A small voyage of discovery’ however, Mr Humphreys, considering how you said looking through a dictionary is like a ‘voyage’ may I ask why you would metaphorically connect looking through a dictionary to find a word like a sailor that is on a long ‘voyage’ to find gold or treasure? I am sure, looking up the words on the Internet or on your phone would spare you the time of looking through many pages and sections of the alphabet to find the word you want. Also, what’s wrong in searching up a word on Google rather than looking it up in the dictionary? It gives you as much of a ‘voyage’ either way because in the end you will eventually get the word you have been searching for. As a matter of fact you have also stated that ‘It’s rare to open a dictionary without being diverted somewhere else’ I am not living in the cliché of criticism but I must contradict this because what you have said can not only apply for a physical dictionary but however, if you were to search up a word on the internet, you would also get ‘distracted’ and would end up knowing more or finding out more words than you intended to.

Mr Humphrys, may I also say that you fill your article with more than needed examples of sarcasm. For example, when you are commenting on ‘Spell-check’ in brackets you have written ‘(sorry: spellcheck)’ – here you are

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