No Apostrophe? Gaaah!

Madames et Monsiours (et Mademoiselles. Je ne vous ai pas oublié!). I would like to introduce you yet again to someone. This is Georgia Dominique Rockport:

Georgia is my Samsung G-800 mobile phone (Factoid: Yes, I name my gadgets!). She was given to me by my dad after he got the new Nokia 5800. Et je l'aime beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup! ( I love her very very very very much!). Why? I'll tell you.

She's got a 5 megapixel camera ( Yes! 5 megapixel camera on a phone!) with effects. So yes, you can adjust the brightness and contrast of your photo. Yes, you can have your photo in sepia or black and white. Yes, you can adjust lighting settings. Yes, you can even do panaoramic and mosaic shots. But if you aren't satified with what you've taken, there's always the built in photo editor to save the day.

Oh! But there's more! There's also the music player which, if used with the earphones can play just as well as an iPod!

But where do you store all those files? The huge memory of course! And no, that's not including the optional micro SD card.

You think she's perfect? Not quite. You see there is one thing that annoys me about using her. One little thing I sigh about everytime I text. And that is that it's a pain in the bum to put an apostrophe into your text.

To put an apostrophe into your message, you have to press and hold the asterisk key and scroll down to Symbol. Then, you choose the panel with the apostrophe and press 5. Then, you press ok to return to your message. What it is, basically, is a whole lot of work for something that took me just three presses of 1 in my previous mobiles (Yes, from Nokia). Whatever. I'll just sigh and go through the process, I guess?

What was that? You wouldn't do that? You would just let it go and continue composing your message? And you're asking me why do I bother with it? It's such a taxing process so why do I go through with it? Why do I allow myself to follow all these steps just to get one measly, insignificant apostrophe? Well, that's just it. I don't consider it insignificant. To me, it's the difference between can't (can not) and cant (insincere language) or won't (would not) and wont (likely). And no, it's not just the Grammar Police Constable in me talking!

You still don't get it? Well, consider how in America students have been failing English exams and getting rejected essays because of this. How? They get so used to text and chat language it seeps its way into these pupils' academic writing. So yes, they actually turn in school essays that say "Its gr8." And this is in a country where English is the primary language. I shudder to think at how it's affected students in the Philippines, text capital of the world. A country where English is the secondary, not primary, language.

This is why I bother with an apostrophe. And for that matter, spell almost everything out fully as much as possible. I wouldn't want to see big, bloody, red marks on my thesis because I said that communication is a "2-wy prcss". I don't want to get misunderstood by people. But most of all, I bother with an apostrophe because i want to respect the language I'm using. Language has
feelings too!

I'm not trying to convince you or anything. In fact, if you want to condemn me for this, no prblm. be tht wy. fyn by me.