Beep. It's from Hamlet. 2B? NT2B?=???

Business Times - 18 Nov 2005

Beep. It's from Hamlet. 2B? NT2B?=???

(LONDON) Woe un2mnkind! The text message is trying to summarise the great poet John Milton and a respected British academic thinks this may be a smart new way to teach literature.

A British company offering mobile phones to students has hired John Sutherland, professor emeritus of English Literature at University College London, to offer subscribers text message summaries and quotes from literary classics. The hope is that messages in the truncated shorthand of mobile phones will help make great literature more accessible.

'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,' the company, Dot Mobile, said in a press release.

Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy is rendered: '2B? NT2B?=???' At the end of Romeo and Juliet, 'bothLuvrs kill Emselves', while Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice concludes when 'Evry1GtsMaryd'.

'Woe un2mnkind', is part of its summary of Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton actually wrote: 'Woe to the inhabitants on Earth.'

'Dot mobile's unique service amply demonstrates text's ability to fillet out the important elements in a plot. Take for example the ending to Jane Eyre - MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus. Was ever a climax better compressed?' asked Prof Sutherland. That's 'mad wife sets fire to house' in English. - Reuters