Banned Words List Carries Its First Emoticon

DynaSoar writes "Lake Superior State University in Michigan's Upper Peninsula ('The land of four seasons: June, July, August and Winter') has just published its 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. Besides such unsurprising inclusions such as 'green' corporations being 'game changing' due to concern with their 'carbon foot print,' this year's list contains an emoticon for the first time — not a smiley face or variant, but the 'heart' symbol made from the characters 'less than' and 'three.' It's perhaps a sign of the evolution of language, or at least of this volunteer linguistic watchdog group, that a symbol compounded of two characters, neither of them a letter, is considered not only a word, but a particularly egregious one."

Comments

Re:a flashback to the 90's

[siride]

The KJV is in Early Modern English, not Old English. Old English is incomprehensible to modern speakers. u scealt witan over æm e u segest ær u spricst.

Re:Language evolves - deal with it

[Lobster Quadrille]

We have now created symbols that can represent simple meanings cross-culturally and cross-linguistically

We had these thousands of years ago, on the walls of caves.

Re:3 is the emoticon

[Dr Dodgy]

Yeah, and how long until...

8===D

Gets the boot?