It’s funny, isn’t it, how – in electronic communication – “ur” has slowly become the accepted abbreviation for “your” – and, for that matter, “you’re”. My own favourite abbreviation is “yr”, which was taught to me by my ex-boss over a series of in-depth lessons in the early 1990s. In case you cared, which you don’t. But anyway, I just received a text from some godforsaken marketing company, and even they used it. Attempting to speak to the kids, I guess. But it looks wrong to me. I understand that it’s probably an extension of “u” for “you”, but it still looks wrong.

Having been an avid reader of Will Self’s journalism, when I see “ur” I think of the way he uses it as a prefix, to mean, like the first, the original, the prototype. (Something to do with the Bible, I vaguely remember. Ah yes – Google is my friend – from the city of Ur, no less.) Anyway, it lends lazy text-speak a whole new metaphysical dimension. “ur stupid” no longer means “you’re a brainless numpty”, it actually means “consider, if you will, the original dunce from which all other threads of stupidity have emerged.” What else? “ur girlfriend is hot” isn’t a creepy text message from a desperate and sexually-repressed mate of yours, it’s a statement which suggests that the first, prototypical female partner must have been the ultimate in beauty and refinement, and millenia of interbreeding have only distilled the potent sexuality of this original über-lass.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this.