Book is the New Cool

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, it’s Alex calling from Muncie, Indiana.

Hey, Alex, what are you calling us about today?

Well, I don’t know if you guys do a lot of text messaging,

But it’s become pretty much my primary mode of communication.

Really?

Yeah, one day, actually, a couple of years ago,

I texted a friend, and I meant to call her a dork.

D-O-R-K.

It used to be you had to press, if you wanted an F,

You had to press three times.

But now you can just do it once,

And the phone guesses what you’re trying to say.

So I was trying to say dork,

But it thought I meant fork, as in the eating utensil.

My friend was very confused as to why I was calling her fork.

You didn’t realize that it accidentally selected the wrong word for you, right?

Right, I wasn’t paying attention.

I was probably driving or something, which is bad.

Alex!

I know, I know.

She and I developed this whole thing where we just referred to each other as forks

Because it was kind of cute and we had a thing.

It was like our pet name thing.

That’s very sweet.

I thought it was something that just the two of us did.

And then I was listening to a song by the band The Streets out of England.

They’re in this cool little rap group.

And he said he was referring to his Ferrari and said it was really book, E-O-O-K,

Which is another T9 mistake for the word cool.

Right.

If you hit 3, 6, 6, 5, those words both come up.

A book is first and cool is second, right?

Right.

So if you want cool, we have to hit zero, I think, to cycle through.

And it was this real light bulb moment when I heard it in the song,

Because I thought I wasn’t worried that anybody else was, like, onto this,

That there were words that are other words.

So my question, really, then, is I didn’t know if you guys knew

Of any other kind of pop culture references of this kind of thing happening,

And if it’s something that’s spreading,

Or if it’s just two people in Indiana and this one guy in England.

No, no, I don’t know the artist that you’re talking about in the U.K.,

But it’s definitely well known there.

Susie Dent has written about it in, I believe, two of her language reports that she’s written.

She does like this annual book that kind of summarizes the things that have happened in language over the year,

Both in the United Kingdom and in North America.

And I’ve also seen it come up in numerous news articles when I’m hunting for words.

And it’s exactly what you’re saying.

You make a mistake.

You mean to choose cool.

You hit book and you send it instead.

And it becomes an in-joke and you start to use stuff like that back and forth.

My problem with this is, though, you’re actually, believe it or not,

The first person I’ve heard of who does this on purpose.

It’s one of those things that’s much talked about but hard to find, actually, in the field.

Is this primarily a UK thing, then?

As far as I know, it’s mostly used in the UK.

I bet it does happen here in the United States.

What I do know about texting, both in the United Kingdom and the United States,

Is that people seek clarity.

And so it’s only going to work if you understand each other on both ends.

There’s already enough abbreviation and enough kind of shorthand language happening there

That sometimes a text message can be difficult to understand.

So when you introduce something like book in place of cool, everybody’s got to be in the know.

It’s just not going to work otherwise.

And I just don’t know people here that use that.

Wow. And those of us who almost never text, we don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

We know, Martha, those rotary phones just don’t do that.

It’s been really book talking with you.

Oh, it’s been great talking to you two, and the fact that it’s English makes it more pretentious,

Which means I will keep it up.

Nice.

Yeah, this kind of thing is often used just for fun.

It’s not in seriousness, is it?

No.

All right.

Well, best of luck with your studies.

I do hope you’re paying attention in class.

I’m doing my best and trying not to text during class because I’m definitely proud of them.

That’s what I think.

All right, take care of yourself, Alex.

All right, thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, Grant, I think this is sort of baffling to most of us who don’t know what you’re talking about.

But, I mean, basically, those phones will write for you.

It’ll try to guess what you’re typing, and that’s how that happens.

My difficulty with texting, and I do use it.

I don’t use it frequently, though, because it’s so slow.

Yeah.

And also, it’s hard to keep your message to 140 characters or whatever the limit is.

Oh, there is a limit? I didn’t know.

I can type 80 words a minute or better on a computer keyboard, and I get to the phone, I’m like, eh, eh, eh.

I feel like I’m hampered, you know.

I can’t really get it.

I’m like, wait a second.

I have a phone in my hand.

Why am I not calling this person and speaking instead?

It just doesn’t make sense sometimes.

If you’re in class, that’s a different story.

You know, this kind of reminds me, too, of when calculators first came out.

You weren’t even born yet, Grant.

But when calculators first came out, you know, you could do these funny little codes.

You could type 7734 and then turn it upside down, and it would be hell.

And there was some little joke that we would do in elementary school where you put in all these different numbers and then you turned your calculator upside down and the answer was shell oil.

Yeah, we had a bunch of those too.

And we would actually do 9009 and you turn it upside down.

It looks kind of like boob and that was funny when you were eight.

-oh, I just laughed.

I guess it’s funny when you’re however old.

Oh, you’re younger than I thought.

Very good.

Well, pick up your phone and give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or text us.

Oh, no, you can’t do that.

Sure you can.

You can text us to words@waywordradio.org.

Oh, you can do that.

Okay.