It is the most annoying thing, remembering that I have read something somewhere but not quite knowing where. Makes me wish all books carried a built-in "Search" function. "Find this!" I'd command, and the requisite passage would pop up, as if by magic.

You know you have been spending too much time on the Internet and on the computer when this happens. Why, even Microsoft Word allows you to "Find", and that is a wonderful tool indeed, cutting through the tedious process of scrolling through the entire document to pinpoint the phrase you want. And on the Internet, of course there is Google.

As a whole I definitely like what I term "real" books much more than I do ebooks; there's something about holding a book in your hands and thumbing through the pages that reading words on a screen simply cannot duplicate. There's a sense of significance and permanence about the printed word which is missing from the displayed word(!), perhaps because the latter is not nearly as tangible.

However, when it comes to looking for a certain phrase or passage... I really do wish it would be possible to incorporate a search engine into every book!

Nanowrimo (National Novel-Writing Month -- should be International Novel-Writing Month, but Innowrimo just doesn't have the same 'oomph', I suppose) kicked off a few days ago... on Nov 1, to be exact. Every year, various friends ask me whether I plan to participate. I don't think I ever will.

Apart from the fact that I don't like the pressure of having to write a certain amount of words in a certain amount of time, I don't have a plot, don't have characters, and don't have a novel inside me dying to be written.

I used to dream of becoming a famous author when I was young; now I'm older and wiser and I'm not at all sure I have what it takes. What makes me think I could write a book that people would want to read? So many good books out there are already out of print and difficult to find, lying obscure and forgotten in hidden dark corners. That is frustrating to a book lover such as myself.

New Zealand is going to allow students to use 'text-speak' when answering exam questions, says a report. My first instinct is to be horrified; my second is to wonder how prepared the examiners are to tackle all the abbreviations -- including those the students might make up themselves -- and wade through the lousy grammar.

I used to be allergic to 'text-speak'. The only time I used it was, quite literally, when I would text others on my mobile phone. Blame it on the 160-character limit. One text message costs 20 cents, so it makes sense to send fewer messages, and in order to do that, one condenses the message as much as possible.

Then I started using the abbreviations during IM conversations, because it's faster and IM is all about quick response time. That was, quite literally, the beginning of the end. I no longer wince at 'text-speak' -- in fact, sometimes I find my fingers itching to type or write out the shtr wrds. So mch easier, don u tink?

But text-speak is not just about abbreviated words, it's about short-cuts: getting the message across with minimal fuss. When I text people, instead of saying, "I went to the market today and came home with some fish and vegetables," I say, "Wnt mkt 2day got fish+veg." Sometimes you have to know how the particular person's mind works in order to decipher what he or she is trying to say. I kid you not.

Text messages are short and ordinarily don't convey a whole host of ideas or information, which is why it's not such a problem attempting to figure out what the person is trying to say, mystifying abbreviations and all. (A friend once used 'emtl' to represent the word 'emotional'. I couldn't figure it out and had to text back to ask for an explanation!) But when it comes to a longer piece of writing, 'text-speak' simply isn't the best way of communicating because the reader ends up concentrating on deciphering the message instead of concentrating on the points you're trying to make.

That's why I believe that context is everything. You do expect to see abbreviations in IM conversations and text messages, due to the nature of the medium. You don't expect to find them in essays and examination answer sheets and books -- or on blog posts (which are more or less essays too, in a way. Unless they're simply full of pictures and contain minimal text).