November 21, 2005
Where4 R U Romeo?
Are Cliffs Notes too detailed for you? Do texts like Paradise Lost and Wuthering Heights have too many pesky real words and not enough abbreviations? If you answered "yes" to either of those questions, Dot Mobile, a mobile-phone service for British students, has just the thing for you.
The company is about to unveil a new service that condenses classic works of fiction—by turning them into text messages. A precis of Romeo and Juliet, for example, will run just five terse sentences:
FeudTween2hses-
Montague&Capulet. RomeoM falls_<3w/_JulietC@mary Secretly Bt R kils J's Coz&isbanishd. J fakes Death. As Part of Plan2b-w/R Bt_leter Bt It Nvr Reachs Him. Evry1confuzd—bothLuvrs kil Emselves.
To most readers that will probably look like unintelligible gobbledygook, but students versed in text messaging should be able to parse that prose. Whether they’ll gain much from doing so is another question entirely. Academics may be understandably skeptical of the service, but it could be a useful study aid, says John Sutherland, an emeritus professor of English literature at University College London who has consulted on the project.
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